Changes in the Health System of the B'laan Indigenous Community– Its Factors and Effects

The influences on the changes of the health system within a B'laan indigenous community in Southern Philippines deserve a deeper sociological analysis to partly explain the disparages in the epidemiological trend presently observable in indigenous health. In here, understanding health system adaptation is logically focused on the various aspects of belief system on health and illness, the health providers, preventive and curative treatments, utilization of medicines, and food source and dietary patterns. External factors in the form of exposure to outsiders, government intervention, acculturation to western-based medicine, and agro- industrialization are considered to be strong influences to the changes in the health system. On the other hand, internal influences to change include the demise and decline of traditional healers in the community as well as the non-utilization of the present locals to their traditional health knowledge.

As the change in the health system among the B’laans is inevitable and apparent, their ability to create an adaptive mechanism in the management of sickness, health and well-being is very limited.  In turn, low adaptation capacity to western-based medicine likely result to poor health outcomes among the indigenous groups when compared to their referent majority population. Beneath the forceful influences, we go through the production and relations of power within the health system as the driving element for low-adaptive capacity.