Cultural knowledge of hygiene and sanitation as a basis for health development in Nepal

Resort to folk competence in health is a recent and important trend in development policy. In the field of primary health care, this trend has gained force in the recognition of the cultural constraints within which any community health programme must operate.Recent research in medical anthropology has focused on the way in which local people acting in the light of their cultural values and folk knowledge take up the medical facilities offered to them. From the bio-medical point of view, this folk knowledge may be at variance with medical science; but even those cases in which folk knowledge is imprecise or erroneous from a bio-medical point of view, such knowledge may still encourage adaptive behaviour.

The investigation focused particularly on folk knowledge of water-related diseases and of water management. The reason lay in the fact that the key for any improvement in public health lies in the prevention of illness and that in the field of preventative medicine the proper management of water resources is of central importance.