Abstract

The burdens of bus fare, arranging for travel, and the requirements of a full day away from work and subsistence agriculture are significant impediments to accessing health care, illustrating a multi-generational battle with poverty where women and young children are most vulnerable. Without monthly visits from a mobile clinic, many children living in rural Vanuatu would not have regular access to biomedical care. Everywhere, intersections of poverty, health, illness, and medicine require new approaches and culturally diverse solutions, informed by ethnographies of children, to improve health care and so health outcomes for infants and children.