ABSTRACT
Health care professionals have traditionally regarded non-adherence with medical advice as a major factor in the explanation of poor outcomes. Issues concerning categorisation of respondents into ethnic groups are discussed elsewhere. Material in the paragraphs demonstrates that it would be inaccurate to depict South Asians in Britain as being opposed to Western medicine or to be, in any general sense, underusing the service. The literature on health attitudes and behaviour among South Asians in Britain is full of contradictory imagery. The community is depicted as knowing little of the concept of screening, and yet on the Indian subcontinent, the determination of foetal gender by amniocentesis is well-known to the point of abuse. The Anglo-Canadian families saw treatment as a way of achieving normalisation rather than “going down hill” whereas there was a tendency for the Chinese families to desist from rehabilitative procedures if any discomfort was shown by the child.
