BU Research Blog

On the last working day of 2018 at Bournemouth University we congratulate FHSS student Raksha Thapa on the publication of her first PhD paper in her first PhD year.  The paper Uptake of Health Services by People from the Dalit Community  was published today in the Journal of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences [1].  Raksha is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Vanessa Heaslip and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.

The paper discusses a variety of studies and reports on  the uptake of health services in Nepal and other low-income countries by socio-economic cultural status in South Asia.  These reports often focus on limitations due to physical factors, such as travel distance to health facility, or lack of medical facilities or electricity at the health care centre or focus on resources, such as lack of service providers, or lack of appropriately trained staff.   Therefore, this article highlights the importance of discrimination as a reason for people not seeking available health care. Discrimination is particularly a barrier to service usage among the most deprived people in society, such as the Dalit community in Nepal and South Asia more generally.  The authors discuss the caste-based discrimination in Nepal and its effects on health outcomes of those groups who experience such discrimination.

Reference:

1. Thapa, R., van Teijlingen, E., Regmi, P. , Heaslip, V. (2018)  Uptake of Health Services by People from the Dalit Community, Journal of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences 1(2): 1-6.