ABSTRACT
The determinants of health can include social relations, the distribution of power and the ability to exercise agency and mobilize and utilize resources. The gender approach looks at the determinants of health and the social, cultural and economic reality in which men and women live and work, and explores whether that reality promotes health and prevents disease (Dias, 1996). In this chapter, we highlight those realities in tropical forested environments, particularly as they pertain to diseases common in such forests. Since the literature on disease often fails to specify the environment in which the study was carried out, we have used the survey done by Colfer et al (2006) to ascertain the diseases that represent significant dangers to humans in forested areas.
