This book focuses on health, healing and health care 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, health care, governance and political studies, sociology and social anthropology, and Nepal and South Asian studies.