Abstract
This chapter explores the ways that village doctors have increased the profits of corporation and business people through the commodification of health in rural Bangladesh. Rural people depend much on these village doctors for their advice and services related to health and healing. This is mainly due to their easy availability, accessibility and affordability as compared to public health care service. However, the popular image of the VDs encourages other private care providers to maintain close liaison with village doctors and pursue them for referring their patients in exchange for a commission. Likewise, some pharmaceutical companies maintain regular contacts with village doctors and persuade them to advise their patients for purchasing drugs of their respective companies. I argue that biomedicine may be usefully examined in the context of its localization process and connection to the corporations by means of a study of village doctors. I ask: How are village doctors an integral part of the local healthcare system? How do care seekers assess the services of village doctors? How is biomedicine being localized and promoted by village doctors? How do they serve the interests of the multinational pharmaceutical companies and the formal private health sector?
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Shah, M.F. (2020). Biomedicine and Modernity: The Case of the “Village Doctors”. In: Biomedicine, Healing and Modernity in Rural Bangladesh. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9143-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9143-0_5
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