CULTURAL PERCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS – PRACTICAL ISSUES (CLINICAL PROBLEMS)
Certain clinical problems arise in contraceptive practice that are general to transcultural medicine. The clinician needs to be aware of symptoms and signs that indicate a disease more prevalent in such patients than in the ethnic majority. The problems of rickets, tuberculosis and diabetes in Asian patients, and hypertension in Afro-Caribbeans are widely discussed. More particular to patients in the child-bearing age group is the issue of preconception counselling and genetic disease. Recent immigrants from rural areas are less likely to have had rubella immunization. Higher rates of consanguinity in Asian couples, haemoglobinopathies and hepatitis  carriage in those from the Far East, are all problems that require the practitioner to be aware, or the record system to be arranged so as to prompt the doctor, to check for these risks.
Training for staff to use different naming systems is available in some areas where local courses are held. Birth dates may be unknown to patients from areas where birth registers are not used, and those given on passports should not always be considered reliable data.
*231/197/1*
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