9. Use of medicine to gain prestige and power. Another
reason for medicine overuse is that many professionals use
their ability to medicate as a sort of magic to make people
grateful and dependent. This way they gain special privilege
and power. In the same way. health workers may be tempted
to give injections or expensive drugs when home remedies or
kindly advice would cost less and do more good.
“ONLY I CAN CURE
YOUR CHILD.”
18-3
Medication as a substitute for caring
Perhaps the biggest reason for overuse of medicines,
however, is that doctors and health workers often find
it easier to hand out medicine than to give the time and
personal attention that people need.
Modern healers,
like witch doctors,
loo often use their
medicines to gain
power and create
dependency.
About 4 out of 5 illnesses are self-limiting. This means people get well whether
they take medicine or not. Most health problems can be better managed
without any medication. What often will help people most is friendly advice
and understanding support. (See Healing Without Medicines, WTND, p. 45.)
However, many doctors and health workers get into the habit of giving everyone
medicine—for any and every problem they have. The less curable the problem, the
more medicines they give!
At the same time, people
have come to expect
medicine every time they
visit a doctor or health
worker. They like to believe
that “there is a medicine
for everything.” They are
disappointed if the doctor
or health worker does not
give them any, even when
medicines will do no good
and the health worker
carefully explains why.
So a ‘vicious circle’ results
in which the doctor always
gives medicine because the
‘patient’ always expects (or
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE THAT LEADS
TO THE OVERUSE OF MEDICINE
demands) it, because the doctor
always gives it. The prescribing of a medicine becomes both the symbol and
the substitute for human caring. This problem is especially common in places
where doctors, nurses, and health workers are overworked. The result is not only a
costly overuse of medicine, but a failure to meet human needs on human Terms.