-BELIEFS, VALUES, AND BEHAVIORS-
A cultural aspect to look at is the beliefs, values, and behaviors towards treatment of leukemia. Parents have been proactive in trying treatments for their children’s leukemia, but a major problem is them being compliant throughout the whole treatment without the parents deciding to discontinue it before it’s over. It is commonly seen that parents will think they are seeing improvement in their child, so they will leave the hospital before the full course of the treatment is complete. Also many patients live far away from the hospital and cannot afford to stay there for long periods of time due to poverty (Al-Hadad et al., 2011).
When it comes to Western Medicine, there is not enough education on how medicines are used so parents are not compliant with the treatments. They don’t understand that their children needs to complete all treatments to get better, instead once they see they are improving they may decide to leave and this increases the mortality rates (Al-Hadad et al., 2011).
A cultural aspect to look at is the beliefs, values, and behaviors towards treatment of leukemia. Parents have been proactive in trying treatments for their children’s leukemia, but a major problem is them being compliant throughout the whole treatment without the parents deciding to discontinue it before it’s over. It is commonly seen that parents will think they are seeing improvement in their child, so they will leave the hospital before the full course of the treatment is complete. Also many patients live far away from the hospital and cannot afford to stay there for long periods of time due to poverty (Al-Hadad et al., 2011).
When it comes to Western Medicine, there is not enough education on how medicines are used so parents are not compliant with the treatments. They don’t understand that their children needs to complete all treatments to get better, instead once they see they are improving they may decide to leave and this increases the mortality rates (Al-Hadad et al., 2011).
-FOOD-
Food is part of Iraqi culture that is partially related to the increase of Leukemia. Some major foods they grown there are wheat, barley, rice, and vegetables. As it was talked about earlier, the main reason for the rise of Leukemia in Iraq is the uranium in the environment. When looking at this culturally, the food is grown in the contaminated soil, which is in turn then contaminating the food products.
During the treatments, one factor that many doctors have trouble with is malnutrition. Although chemotherapy is hard on a patient’s appetite, it is important that what they are eating is healthy food. Many of these children coming in for treatment are malnourished and don’t have the resources or money for good nutritional food and nutrition is a big part of helping a person overcome a disease such as leukemia (Al-Hadad et al., 2011).
Food is part of Iraqi culture that is partially related to the increase of Leukemia. Some major foods they grown there are wheat, barley, rice, and vegetables. As it was talked about earlier, the main reason for the rise of Leukemia in Iraq is the uranium in the environment. When looking at this culturally, the food is grown in the contaminated soil, which is in turn then contaminating the food products.
During the treatments, one factor that many doctors have trouble with is malnutrition. Although chemotherapy is hard on a patient’s appetite, it is important that what they are eating is healthy food. Many of these children coming in for treatment are malnourished and don’t have the resources or money for good nutritional food and nutrition is a big part of helping a person overcome a disease such as leukemia (Al-Hadad et al., 2011).