KQED’s ‘California Report’ Examines Challenges To Providing Care to State’s Growing Oaxacan Immigrant Population

California's growing population of indigenous Oaxacan immigrants, who prefer traditional healers and herbal remedies to Western medicine, pose new challenges to California's health care system, KQED's "The California Report" reports.

According to KQED, about 100 Central Valley physicians on Monday met with a panel of visiting Mexican indigenous healers to discuss issues related to providing culturally competent care to an estimated 100,000 indigenous farm workers in the state. Panelists discussed issues including medicinal plants used in Oaxaca and indigenous beliefs surrounding the relationship between disease and emotion, KQED reports.

For example, a diabetes educator at University Medical Center in Fresno who attended the conference said that many Oaxacan patients he has encountered are "scared" of Western medicine or have "tremendous cultural resistance" to some conventional treatments, such as the belief that insulin is addictive and toxic.

The Mexican indigenous healers are scheduled to hold similar conferences in Bakersfield and Salinas later this week, KQED reports (Khokha, "The California Report," KQED, 11/8).

The complete segment is available online in RealPlayer.

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