Health education that concords with people's “lay epidemiology” and folk models is more likely to lead to changes in behaviour than that which seems to contradict such models. Airhihenbuwa and colleagues, in the context of AIDS prevention, have exposed the fallacy of the assumption that health education is merely a matter of determining “deficiencies” in knowledge and meeting those deficiencies with educational material such as leaflets, teaching seminars, or mass media programmes. Instead, educators must centralise the cultural experiences of those who have hitherto been mar ginalised.13 24 Given that the Bangladeshis in this study indicated a high regard for oral explanations from informal sources (friends, relatives, and other patients with diabetes),we think that the potential for learning via oral sources within Bangladeshi culture is high