This project supports the dissertation research of an anthropologist from Southern Methodist University studying the use of pharmaceuticals in urban Pakistan. The project will provide ethnographic information about people purchasing and using pharmaceuticals. Using participant observation, and structured as well as unstructured interviews with consumers and pharmacists the project will study the marketing, distributing, interpretation and uses of biomedical pharmaceuticals. The research will enhance our knowledge of the medical belief system and the resultant treatment-seeking process which will help researchers, health care providers, and policy makers to better understand the basis for health care decisions and the use, and misuse, or pharmaceuticals. This research is important because the "folk medicine" of pharmaceuticals is very little studied, at the same time that the world's population is urbanizing at a fast pace, and multinational corporations are providing pharmaceuticals all over the world in retail outlets with no prescription control. Understand one case study of urban pharmaceutical use will be valuable indicating areas of potential concern as well as benefit.
