Medicine and Health Care
Modern health care remains rudimentary, but since the French colonial period, biomedical ideas about disease have spread and modern medicines are used even in the most remote villages. Depending on a person's level of education and exposure, biomedical ideas compete with or combine with folk ideas. Those ideas include spirit loss and the balance and imbalance of humors that can be remedied by diet and by herbal medicines. For spirit loss, a baci, or a shamanistic ceremony may be performed. The indigenous medical tradition that draws on Indian knowledge is paralleled by Sinitic folk medical traditions in the towns.