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Objectives: to explore men's and women's experiences, beliefs and practices surrounding childbirth in a rural highlands community in Papua New Guinea. Design: a qualitative study comprising focus group discussions, key informant and in depth interviews. Setting: the study was undertaken in a rural community in Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. Participants: 51 women and 26 men participated in 11 focus group discussions. Key informant and in depth interviews were undertaken with 21 women and five men. Findings: both women and men recognised the importance of health facility births, linking village births with maternal and newborn deaths. Despite this, many women chose to give birth in the community in circumstances influenced by cultural and customary beliefs and practices. Women giving birth in the community frequently gave birth in an isolated location. Traditional beliefs surrounding reasons for difficult births, including spiritual beliefs were reported along with the use of traditional methods used to help prolonged and difficult births. Conclusions: while the importance of health facility births is recognised in this rural community many women continue to give birth in the village. Identifying and understanding local customs, beliefs and practices, particularly those that may be harmful to women and their newborn infants, is critical to the development of locally-appropriate community-based strategies for improving maternal and infant health in rural communities in PNG and other resource-limited, high burden settings. INSET: Pele¿s story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is limited understanding of Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Vietnam. This ethnographic study aimed to explore how ASD is represented and managed in the cultural, social and economic contexts of Vietnam, and describe the experiences of families with children with ASD in Hanoi, Vietnam. This study was conducted from 2011 to 2012 in Hanoi and employed a range of methods, including participant observation, in-depth interviews with 27 parents of children with ASD and 17 key informants, and online survey. This study found that within Hanoi, Vietnam, ASD has been culturally and socially constructed as a ‘disease’, ‘karmic demerit’ and ‘family problem’ rather than a life-long developmental disorder that needs support from government. Children with ASD and their families experience various forms of stigma and discrimination. There are limitations in assessment and diagnosis of ASD. Parents of children with ASD have little access to services for their children, and the limited political and economic supports exacerbate their difficulties. This study highlights some of the ways in which the understandings and management of ASD vary cross culturally. It also suggests further attention is required to the provision of appropriate public education, low cost interventions and support for family advocacy groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer has become the most frequent cancer among women in Vietnam, claiming over 6000 lives a year. In this article we investigate how laypeople explain the causes of this pressing health issue based on an ethnographic study conducted in the Central region of Vietnam in 2019, including hospital observation, interviews with 33 breast cancer patients and focus groups with 21 laypeople. Our findings show that their knowledge of causation is mediated through historical social contexts of warfare, a rapacious market economy, poverty, and cultural configurations of gender roles. Contamination of the environment and food, use of chemicals, failure to follow postpartum practices, breast ailments, and worry are understood to be immediate determinants of breast cancer. These popular accounts are unlikely to recognize biomedical narratives of breast cancer risk that focus upon individual responsibility and lifestyle factors because they may not reflect the lived realities of women. We emphasise the implications for public awareness campaigns to meaningfully engage with the situated social and cultural specificities of breast cancer. • Patients perceive breast cancer as a gendered manifestation of their vulnerability. • People are familiar with biomedical risk models of hazardous food and environment. • The cancer-causing role of poverty is emphasised. • Women refer to their maternal and nurturing obligations to explain their cancers. • Cancer causality becomes a means to articulate attitudes towards the social worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News media can be an important source of information about emerging health threats. They are also significant sites for the production of narrative on threats to life that help to condition and reflect the responses of governments and publics. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one such health threat with particular significance because it represents the failure to manage the risks to antibiotics and other antimicrobials, health technologies that have provided the basis for modern medicine. Knowledge of how news media address this situation is an important element for an effective public health response to AMR and helps to extend the social analysis of health and media. Based on an analysis of television, printed and digital news for 2017 in Australia, this paper examines the patterns and meanings of AMR news. It shows that AMR is a fragmented story mainly framed by scientific discovery. These stories reassure audiences that science is seeking out the means of arresting AMR and, therefore, also constructs lay publics as passive witnesses to the AMR story. This pattern of AMR story-telling furthers the social standing of science and scientists, but it also neglects deliberation on collective action, important lacunae in the social response to AMR. • Digital news sources fragment narratives on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). • TV, printed and digital news mainly draw on discovery narratives to explain AMR. • Discovery narratives further scientific authority but foreclose audience agency. • Alternative narratives are needed to promote public engagement with AMR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual antibiotic use for common infections is a focus for public health efforts seeking to prevent antimicrobial resistance (AMR). These approaches employ a binary opposition of responsible and irresponsible antibiotic use with a focus on the knowledge, behaviours and intentions of the individual. To overcome these unhelpful tendencies and reveal new entry points for AMR prevention, we adopted assemblage theory to analyse personal experience narratives on individual antibiotic use in community settings. Antibiotic use was irregular, situationally diverse and shaped by factors not always under personal control. Individuals were focussed on preventing, moderating and treating infections that threatened their health. Our analysis shows that antibiotic assemblages are both cause and effect of individual efforts to manage infections. We suggest that AMR prevention needs to look beyond the antibiotic as object and the (ir)responsible use binary to engage with the antibiotic effects individuals seek in order to manage infectious diseases. This antibiotic assemblage orientation is likely to be more meaningful for individuals seeking out methods for promoting their health in the face of common infections. • Antimicrobial resistance prevention is proving difficult in community settings. • Prevention focus on patient knowledge and behaviour has proved ineffective. • Assemblage theory offers new entry points for prevention. • Antibiotic effects depend on the action of biosocial systems. • Effective prevention needs to focus on system drivers of antibiotic use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]