Paper short abstract:

This paper will look at forms of care related to sexual and reproductive health in rural Costa Rica. First I will identify the biomedical forms of care offered by a State run Health Care Facility. Then I will distinguish non-medicalised forms of care that women experience in an indigenous community that accesses health care in this rural facility.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will look at forms of care related to sexual and reproductive health in rural Costa Rica. First I will identify the biomedical forms of care offered by a State run Health Care Facility. Then I will distinguish non-medicalised forms of care that women experience in an indigenous community that accesses health care in this rural facility. I would concentrate on identifying the ways in which these care practices interact by enabling or distorting each other. I will highlight of forms of care that are part of everyday life in this indigenous community and that are unrecognised or misunderstood by the Health Care Facility, vis-à-vis the forms of care that rely on biomedical knowledge about disease, pregnancy and hospitalised birth that is emphasised through the health care system. In order to bring forth this analysis, I will look at the implementation of a teenage pregnancy prevention program called Salud Mesoamérica (Health Mesoamerica), which is embedded in the Millennium Development Goals initiative. This program is partially financed by bilateral and multilateral organisations, among them the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The historical influence of these organisations on Costa Rica’s state run health care system and the interactions of this system with diverse populations illustrates a reality in which global, national and local dynamics meet and determine each other.