Medical Library
The following books are available as downloadable pdf files in compressed ZIP format. The chapters in each book are saved as individual pdf files. Simply click on the link and download the file. High speed internet is recommended.
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A Book for Midwives
Hisperian Foundation, Berkeley, California, USA
Midwives need accurate information to help them protect the health and well-being of women, babies, and families. They need strategies to fight poverty and the unequal treatment of women, and for working together and with other health workers towards health for all. We revised A Book for Midwives with these needs in mind. In this edition of A Book for Midwives, you will find:
- information needed to care for women and their babies during pregnancy, labor, birth, and in the weeks following birth, because this is the primary work of most midwives.
- skills for protecting a woman’s reproductive health throughout her life, because a woman’s health needs are important whether or not she is having a baby, and because a woman’s health when she is not pregnant affects how healthy and safe her pregnancies and births will be.
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A Health Handbook for Women with Disabilities
Jane Maxwell, Julia Watts Belser, and Darlena David
Hisperian Foundation, Berkeley, California, USA
Women with disabilities need good health. Good health is more than the absence of disease. When a disabled woman has good health it means she experiences well-being—of her body, mind, and spirit. Women with disabilities can take charge of their own health when they have information that affirms their own experience of their bodies and health needs. They can also use this information to change the way people think about disability. As women with disabilities take charge of their lives, they will gain respect and support in their communities. While disability itself may not be a health problem, many times the health problems of women with disabilities go untreated. This can mean that a simple health problem in a woman with disability, if left untreated, can become a lifethreatening problem. We must remove the barriers that keep disabled women from achieving good health.
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A Workers Guide to Health and Safety
Hisperian Foundation, Berkeley, California, USA
This book covers health and safety issues in work places around the world.
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Community Guide to Environmental Health
Hisperian Foundation, Berkeley, California, USA
Chapters includes are:
- Cholera Prevention
- Safe Handling of Healthcare Waste
- Water for Life, Communicty Water Security
- Pesticides are Poison
- Sanitation and cleanliness for a healthy enfivonment
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Global Health Watch
The report is divided into six sections:
Part A looks at how political and economic change at the global level influences people’s health and well-being worldwide, noting how little control individuals have over these changes. It points to solutions for redressing global imbalances and shows how few of the promises made to developing countries in past years have been kept.
Part B carves out an agenda for the public sector’s role in health, with a special focus on low- and middle-income countries. Its first chapter asserts that the Primary Health Care Approach adopted by the world’s health ministers in the late 1970s is still relevant today, but that the public sector role in health is under threat, and that commercialization of health care has proceeded apace in the last two decades to the detriment of health. It points to the limitations of current efforts to address health priorities through selective health care interventions and pro-poor targeting. The chapter argues for a greater commitment to universal health care systems and for renewed investment in the public sector. Subsequent chapters on medicines and gene technology take up the theme of commercialization and suggest ways in which the public sector role can be strengthened. Other chapters explore two controversial issues – health worker migration in low-income countries that are short of health personnel; and the political struggle over sexual and reproductive rights, including analysis of how health care is connected to broader debates about poverty, politics and gender injustice.
Part C tackles the needs of two particular groups of people whose rights to health are frequently violated – Indigenous peoples and people with disabilities. These chapters describe their struggles for rights and outline what is needed to strengthen their claims on health and health care over the coming years.
Part D returns to the broader picture of health. The Primary Health Care Approach emphasized intersectoral action in health, recognizing that the determinants of health often lie outside the health care sector. Five chapters on education, war, environment, water and food security reveal the widespread threats to health in a diverse range of areas and circumstances, but also point to the potential for synergistic actions by governments and civil society actors that could improve livelihoods in several dimensions.
Part E scrutinizes the conduct of global institutions such as WHO, UNICEF Introduction 8 and the World Bank, and assesses the international actions of richer nations and big business. The analysis points to the need to redress imbalances of power at the international level; for richer nations to fulfil their promises on resource transfers to the developing world; for tighter regulation of powerful multinationals; and for better management of international institutions.
Part F concludes the Global Health Watch by drawing all the chapters together and making some general recommendations and possibilities for concerted action by civil society organizations.
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Helping Children Who Are Deaf
Family and community support for children who do not hear well
By Sandy Niemann, Devorah Greenstein, and Darlena David Illustrated by Heidi Broner
Deafness is a community issue. This book was written primarily for parents and other caregivers of young children who are deaf or cannot hear well. But it is not their task alone to deal with the needs of their children — it is the whole community’s responsibility. Both deaf and hearing people can accept and welcome children who are deaf, and give them the care and attention they deserve. Communities can organize ways for deaf children to learn a language and for everyone to learn to communicate with deaf children. They can begin to address the causes of deafness, and help children who are deaf grow up to be active members of the community.
Around the world, many children lose their hearing because of illness and untreated ear infections. This means that most deafness is preventable. To reduce and prevent deafness, we must change the conditions of poverty that oppress so many people around the world. All communities need basic sanitation, good food, clean water, safe housing, and health care. And everyone benefits from better education and more community participation. When we reach out to our friends and neighbors, the bonds we create help us build stronger communities and a more just world. When we make our communities places where deaf children can thrive, we improve life for everyone.
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Helping Children Who Are Blind
Family and community support for children with vision problems Written by Sandy Niemann and Namita Jacob
The Hesperian Foundation Berkeley, California, USA
Illustrated by Heidi Broner
When using this book, try to read Chapters 1 through 4 first. These chapters have important background information on how to help your child learn. Then turn to Chapters 5 through 8, and Chapters 10 and 11, to find examples of activities to help your child learn new skills. The remainder of this book contains information to help caregivers support one another, to help parents learn from one another and work together, and to increase your knowledge of blindness and vision problems.
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HIV, Health and Your Community
A Guide for Action
Reuben Granich,M.D.,M.P.H.
Jonathan Mermin,M.D.,M.P.H.
Illustrations by Mona Sfeir
With contributions by Suzan Goodman, M.D.
THE HESPERIAN FOUNDATION Berkeley, California, USA
The book is meant for people who are searching for answers to questions about HIV prevention, epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment. Each chapter begins with a fictional story; where useful, boxes with text or illustrations have been added to highlight key points.At the end of each chapter we answer questions raised by the story, hoping at the same time to answer some of the reader’s questions. The appendix discusses common diseases suffered by peo- 1 ple with HIV and treatments for them. It is intended for the doctor or nurse who is involved in caring for people with HIV disease, and unlike the other chapters requires some basic medical knowledge. HIV health care is always changing, and some of the recommendations in the chapter may be outdated. Adaptations to individual situations are encouraged. Finally,we have included a glossary of words often used in discussions about HIV.
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Where There Is No Dentist
by Murray Dickson
updated and expanded with information about hiv/aids by Richard Bebermeyer, Martin Hobdell and Gene Stevenson
Introduction by David Werner, author of Where There Is No Doctor
INTRODUCTION by David Werner
A healthy tooth is a living part of the body. It is connected by ‘life-lines’ of blood and nerve to a person’s heart and brain. To separate the tooth from the body, or even to interrupt those ‘life-lines’, means death to the tooth. It also means pain and injury to the body, to the person. Let us look at it another way. The health of the teeth and gums is related to the health of the whole person, just as the well-being of a person relates to the health of the entire community. Because of this, the usual separation between dentistry and general health care is neither reasonable nor healthy. Basic care of the teeth and gums— both preventive and curative—should be part of the ‘know-how’ of all primary health care workers. Ideally, perhaps, Where There Is No Dentist should be a part of Where There Is No Doctor. Think of it as a companion volume, both to Where There Is No Doctor and Helping Health Workers Learn. Murray Dickson has taken care to write this book in a way that will help the readers see dental care as part of community health and development. The approach is what we call ‘people centered.’ Where There Is No Dentist is a book about what people can do for themselves and each other to care for their gums and teeth. It is written for: village and neighborhood health workers who want to learn more about dental care as part of a complete community-based approach to health; school teachers, mothers, fathers, and anyone concerned with encouraging dental health in their children and their community; and those dentists and dental technicians who are looking for ways to share their skills, to help people become more self-reliant at lower cost. Just as with the rest of health care, there is a strong need to ‘deprofessionalize’ dentistry—to provide ordinary people and community workers with more skills to prevent and cure problems in the mouth. After all, early care is what makes the dentist’s work unnecessary—and this is the care that each person gives to his or her own teeth, or what a mother does to protect her children’s teeth.
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Where There Is No Doctor
A village health care handbook / by David Werner; with Carol Thuman and Jane Maxwell-Rev. ed.
This handbook has been written primarily for those who live far from medical centers, in places where there is no doctor. But even where there are doctors, people can and should take the lead in their own health care. So this book is for everyone who cares. It has been written in the belief that:
- Health care is not only everyone’s right, but everyone’s responsibility.
- Informed self-care should be the main goal of any health program or activity.
- Ordinary people provided with clear, simple information can prevent and treat most common health problems in their own homes—earlier, cheaper, and often better than can doctors.
- Medical knowledge should not be the guarded secret of a select few, but should be freely shared by everyone.
- People with little formal education can be trusted as much as those with a lot. And they are just as smart.
- Basic health care should not be delivered, but encouraged.
Clearly, a part of informed self-care is knowing one’s own limits. Therefore guidelines are included not only for what to do, but for when to seek help. The book points out those cases when it is important to see or get advice from a health worker or doctor. But because doctors or health workers are not always nearby, the book also suggests what to do in the meantime—even for very serious problems. This book has been written in fairly basic English, so that persons without much formal education (or whose first language is not English) can understand it. The language used is simple but, I hope, not childish. A few more difficult words have been used where they are appropriate or fit well. Usually they are used in ways that their meanings can be easily guessed. This way, those who read this book have a chance to increase their language skills as well as their medical skills. Important words the reader may not understand are explained in a word list or vocabulary at the end of the book. The first time a word listed in the vocabulary is mentioned in a chapter it is usually written in italics. Where There Is No Doctor was first written in Spanish for farm people in the mountains of Mexico where, 27 years ago, the author helped form a health care network now run by the villagers themselves. Where There Is No Doctor has been translated into more than 50 languages and is used by village health workers in over 100 countries.
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Where Women Have No Doctor
A health guide for women
A. August Burns
Ronnie Lovich
Jane Maxwell
Katharine Shapiro
Editor: Sandy Niemann
Assistant editor: Elena Metcalf
Hesperian Foundation Berkeley, California, USA
This book combines self-help medical information with an understanding of the ways poverty, discrimination, and cultural beliefs limit women’s health and access to care. An essential resource on the problems that affect women or that affect women differently from men. 584 pages.
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Women's Health Exchange
A resource for education and training
Hesperian Foundation Berkeley, California, USA
12 issues covering women's health topics. Learning activities and creative solutions are included
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