I was talking to a friend who had come back from a Clinic, and he was raving about how helpful the doctors there were. They shared tons of information, so he could make a well-informed decision ; and they spent a lot of time counselling him and helping him to decide for himself. He was very impressed with how much time and trouble they had taken in creating and disseminating patient education material. And then he said - But of course , this will never work in a country like India , where people are illiterate and poor , and cannot understand what's happening.
I had to respectfully disagree with him. Yes , we can't copy and paste the American model for patient education , but the truth is that just because people are illiterate doesn't mean that they are not able to make their decisions for themselves. In fact the poor have to be much street-smarter than us, simply in order to be able…
