State, Society and Health in Nepal

This book focuses on health, healing and healthcare in Nepal. It presents an intriguing picture: the interplay between the natural processes that cause ill-health or diseases and the socio-cultural processes through which people try to understand and cope with them. The work places medical tradition, health politics, gender and health, and pharmaceutical business within the wider politico-economic milieu of Nepal. It also describes the establishment of medical anthropology as an academic discipline, and its relevance for understanding the country’s specific health problems, health care traditions and health policies.

Combining scientific research with practical experiences, the book will serve as a unique resource, especially for health workers, policymakers, and teachers and students in medical schools, those in public health, social medicine, healthcare, governance and political studies, sociology and social anthropology, and Nepal and South Asian studies.

Madhusudan Subedi is Professor at the Department of Sociology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal where he teaches sociology of health, ageing and disability, and public policy. He was previously Professor at the Department of Community Health Sciences, Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS) and contributed to the development of its curriculum. A medical anthropologist/sociologist by training, he obtained a Master’s degree in Sociology from Tribhuvan University and a Master of Philosophy in Medical Anthropology from the University of Bergen, Norway. For almost 20 years he has taught students of medicine, public health and social sciences. He has conducted extensive research on health issues among people in rural areas of Nepal, and has written and co-authored three books and published more than 30 articles.