“Buen vivir” through integrated health care: optimizing intercultural collaboration in rural areas in Ecuador

This TEAM project will improve limited access to good quality of care of two pilot ethnic communities living in SENPLADES zones 6-7. The focus will be on the intercultural collaboration between university educated staff members (nurses, rural doctors, student interns) and the traditional healers and midwives (parteras) in the community health centres. We will study the needs and the conditions which compromise intercultural health care and provide concrete measures of effective implementation of intercultural integration, in the medical curriculum at UTPL and other universities, as well as for practitioners in the field.