1UGC-CSSEIP, Mysore University, Mysore
Experts felt that health can be more precisely viewed as an index of human adaptation to ‘micro-ecological alcove’. Even though western system of medicine has many advantages over the traditional, it has not totally been accepted by the majority rural Indian masses till today. It is because of their unique health behavior consistently influencing by their inherited culture, tradition, beliefs, values, norms and practice etc. The plight of rural people has drawn increasing policy attention since 1940. Today majority of rural people are suffering with various communicable and non-communicable diseases. It is stated there is a positive correlation between the health status of the rural people and their social, economical and cultural background. Anthropologists have conducted various studies on culturally bounded health behavior among various rural settings and found that rural health culture is a part of sub-culture with in a totally of population. This health culture will be a wider complex of the knowledge including roles, norms, values ideologies, practices, rituals, etiology, lock healers etc. All these together responsible for having particular type of health behavior in case of tribes. Health culture of rural society is not easily influencing by the various external agencies so that rural health culture is developing and maintaining its own distinctive practice. Over the last few decades various Indian governments have developed plans to achieve long term goals to provide a compressive health care programme for the rural people. However, result is not encouraging. This study has been conducted on changing health behavior of rural elderly women population in the two districts of Karnataka.
