Health Social Biography - A Reflection on Health Through a Sociological Perspective

Running head; Health social biography 1
Health Social Biography
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Health social biography 2
Part 1
I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth as many rich people in my neighborhood.
As a matter of fact I was born in some of the poorest environments in India ten years before my
family could relocate to the city. However, I consider myself lucky to have been born in hospital
by a mother who had not had much education and in an environment where not many people
accessed institutionalized treatment. The main reason probably because of the challenges that
one had to encounter before they could even get to a hospital and the high poverty levels which
forced many people to seek herbal medicines from local health providers as opposed to hospital
care (Patel, et al (2015).
The history of my birth starts on the 1st of April in the year 1999 when the world was
somehow obsessed with the millennium issues. Just like any other child born in rural India, I
encountered the same problems and pressures of growing up. To this day, living in New Delhi, I
still encounter challenges and pressures of growing up similar to those of the fellow youths in the
city. Among the major challenges many people faced at that time was poverty, lack of access to
health care, high levels of illiteracy in the community, shortage of schools and other social
facilities as Nambiar, & Muralidharan, (2017) explains.
I was born in a very small but extended family – a very rare phenomenon – back then in
1999. The family consisted of my parents, an elder brother and an elder sister, my grandparents
and my uncle who was then a student in the university. My parents were not very learned as they
did not have a university education. My dad who was more learned was a college dropout who
had encountered several challenges in raising school fees and the incapability of his parents in
taking care of him and his brother which forced him to move out of school to look for greener
pastures. After many years of toil and sweat he had resulted to opening a hotel which did earn

Health social biography 3
him just enough to sustain the family. My mother was then employed as a cook in a local high
school a few years before she could join dad at the hotel business.
The year 1999 was a year that had many hurdles for me and my family. My grandfather
had been diagnosed with cancer of the liver and liver cirrhosis. His persistent alcohol abuse had
turned against him. Grandmother who had lived for almost ten years with diabetes was having
challenges with her blood pressure. Her diabetes was worsening especially due to stress after she
heard that grandpa was diagnosed with cancer. The two were therefore being hospitalized every
now and then. Health was considered as a priority at home despite the fact that my parents had
not had so much education. The cost of medication incurred by my grandparents was therefore
increasing day after day.
Due to the financial constraints that we were going through as a family, some challenges
were inevitable. Among these challenges was feeding on a consistently balanced diet, hygiene
and sanitation around and inside the home, access to clean drinking water, regular health
checkups and quality treatment explains Andres, Briceño, Chase, & Echenique, (2017). These
are days when our lives were consistent with the popular inverse care law which states that
people who need health care the most are often the ones who encounter the greatest challenges in
trying to access quality health. Surprisingly, these are the very people who seem not to be
alarmed by even the very little things that they can do to improve their health such as boiling
drinking water to make it safe for drinking. To these poor people good health has consistently
been defined as absence of illness. This has made most of them to only go to health facilities
when sick forfeiting regular checkups and preventive treatment.
Amidst all these challenges, I always feel obliged to congratulate my parents since none
of us including my two siblings was diagnosed of any serious health problem due to food and