Project Summary: The Tibetan Maternal Health
System approach integrates Tibetan medical theory, Tibetan culture
and traditions with western interventions. This approach utilizes
biomedicine, ethno medicine, and folk health to create interventions
to improve the health and save the lives of rural Tibetan women
and children. The Tibetan Medical System strives to improve the
health of women and children by providing access to safe, affordable,
linguistically and culturally appropriate health services and
health education for rural Tibetan women and children.
Project Need and Beneficiaries:
Every culture and society must deal with illness and disease and
has developed concepts about the healing process, healers, diagnosis,
medical treatment, medical knowledge and healing practices. In Tibet,
much of this knowledge and practice has been lost or undergone some
transformations because of socio-cultural patterns and historical
conditions.
Project Activities and Components:
Traditional Tibetan medical theory, practice, and pharmacology encompass
a vast amount of knowledge, which includes information on maternal
and child health care. Tibetan medicine records the fetal shape
week by week for 38 weeks, and presents them in color pictures to
illustrate the "fish-tortoise-pig" stages in its course
of embryonic development. The science of Tibetan medicine provides
in-depth detail of pregnant physiology and embryology.
In 2004 and 2006, Tibetan Healing Fund hosted the
Tibetan Maternal Health System development conference in Qinghai
Province (Amdo). The conference was attended by 24 Tibetan doctors,
midwives and health professionals fromacross the Tibetan regions
of P.R. China to discuss the future of women’s health in rural
Tibet. The result of the conference was the development of the Tibetan
Maternal Health System approach to health and the creation of medical
texts due to be published in fall 2006.
Long-term Impact: The Tibetan
Maternal Health System integrates Tibetan medical theory and Tibetan
culture and traditions with western interventions and the biomedical
approach to the causation of illness, diagnosis practices, therapeutic
procedures, and preventative care. This fully integrative approach
to health incorporates the social, culture and environment and introduces
public health on a Tibetan medical platform. Tibetan Healing Fund
is collaborating with Qinghai Tibetan Medical College and Kumbum
Tibetan Medical Hospital to research and implement the various components
of this system.
The founder of Tibetan Healing Fund, Dr. Kunchok
Gyaltsen is one in a new generation of outstanding Tibetan Medical
Doctors. Having spent his life gaining expertise in both Tibetan
Buddhist Studies, Tibetan Medicine and public health; Dr. Gyaltsen’s
visionary approach to public health is to integrate Tibetan Medicine
and culture with western knowledge and theories. He is aided in
this mission by some of Tibet’s greatest Tibetan medical scholars.
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Education Project