Framing the allopathic approach to health and disease labels through patient narratives during the COVID-19 pandemic first wave in Ecuador: An understudied and underutilized tool in health care practice and delivery

Abstract

Presented in this article is a search for folk, popular, and professional health care labels through patient narratives. Fieldwork was done in the Ecuadorian communities of Santa Rosa and Pano during the first wave of COVID-19. The results emphasize the utility of studying labels to better understand what communities experience in health crises, the opportunities to improve allopathic health care delivery and engagement with the folk and popular sectors. Both communities had adapted labels that were familiar to them from prior health experiences and served to inform their personal medical care during the pandemic. Meanwhile, in Pano, an Indigenous predominant community, people had inherited labels for plants and pandemics in both the Kichwa and Spanish language, and those provided a vocabulary of hope to the people. In Santa Rosa the labels demonstrated the grief and difficult times the community had experienced with the limited health resources available.