Tracing Home‐Based Health Care Change in an Andean Indian Community

Abstract

Qualitative and quantitative data collected over a period of 11 years indicate that Saraguro Indians in the southern Ecuadorian highlands rely almost exclusively on mothers as family healers despite access to a range of specialized traditional and biomedical services. However, the home‐based health care system has begun to change in recent years as mothers increasingly integrate selected features of biomedicine into family curing. I suggest that the tenacity of home‐based therapy is a product of its receptivity to innovations that complement core health care values.