'It's a secret in my life': frontstage and backstage experiences of women undergoing induced abortions in a rural community of Pakistan.

Abortion is taboo in Pakistani society, and it is stigmatised throughout the country, regardless of legal permission. Despite the burdens imposed by social norms of pronatalism and motherhood, women do exercise agency to have abortions. This study explores the experiences of women who have had induced abortions and maintained their social status within the community.

'I haven't discussed anything with anyone': lived experience of long-term users of benzodiazepine receptor agonists regarding their treatment for substance use disorder.

Introduction: Treatment for substance use disorder (SUD) to benzodiazepine receptor agonists (BZRA) can be challenging and lengthy. BZRA are prescribed for anxiety and insomnia, and though guidelines recommend an initial prescription duration of one to four weeks, this is frequently longer. Understanding the multiple challenges associated with withdrawing from BZRA and exploring the nuance and complexities from the patient's perspective is crucial.

Experiences of social burden amongst survivors of breast cancer in Gaza: A qualitative study.

Purpose: This qualitative study explores how social-cultural factors can either amplify or attenuate prospects for social support following a breast cancer diagnosis. The aim of the study is to analyse narratives of individuals diagnosed with breast cancer to examine how the illness influences social support and hence their post-illness experiences.

Methods: Forty semi-structured interviews, including thirty-eight with breast cancer survivors, are analysed using a grounded theory approach.

Healthcare Professionals' Discursive Constructions of Parental Vaccine Hesitancy: A Tale of Multiple Moralities.

Healthcare professionals play a crucial role in addressing the concerns of vaccine-hesitant parents since they form a trusted source for vaccine-related information. An increasing body of evidence suggests that healthcare professionals are faced with complexities when navigating the sensitive topic of parental vaccine hesitancy, as they balance their own vaccine- and context-specific concerns with institutional and societal pressures to vaccinate. Furthermore, health choices, such as parental choices for childhood vaccination, are often linked to moralisation.

Plant use and perceptions in the context of sexual health among people of Congolese descent in Belgium.

Background: The use of medicinal plants is integral to global healthcare systems, with Sub-Saharan Africa maintaining a robust tradition of herbal medicine alongside Western-oriented healthcare. As migrant communities tend to continue traditional herbal practices after migration, documenting this use is vital to develop culturally sensitive healthcare. This study investigates plant usage and perspectives in the context of sexual and reproductive health among the Congolese community in Belgium, particularly in the Matongé quarter of Brussels.

Trust matters: The Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy in Europe Study.

This article presents the design of a seven-country study focusing on childhood vaccines, Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy in Europe (VAX-TRUST), developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study consists of (a) situation analysis of vaccine hesitancy (examination of individual, socio-demographic and macro-level factors of vaccine hesitancy and analysis of media coverage on vaccines and vaccination and (b) participant observation and in-depth interviews of healthcare professionals and vaccine-hesitant parents. These analyses were used to design interventions aimed at increasing awareness on the complexity of vaccine hesitancy among healthcare professionals involved in discussing childhood vaccines with parents.

'Through a kaleidoscope': A Foucauldian discourse analysis of Belgian policy regarding patients with a migration background and depression in general practices.

A higher prevalence of depression is found among patients with a migration background within the Belgian population. Nevertheless, this group is underrepresented in ambulant and residential mental health care services. Since general practitioners (GPs) have a crucial gatekeeping role, this led some researchers to investigate the possibility of a provider bias influencing GPs' assessment and referral of depressed patients with a migration background.

Individual, interpersonal, and organisational factors associated with discrimination in medical decisions affecting people with a migration background with mental health problems: the case of general practice.

Objectives: Although people with a migration background (MB) have more unmet mental health needs than the general population, patients with a MB are still underrepresented in mental health care services. Provider bias towards these patients has been evidenced repeatedly but its driving factors remain elusive. We assessed the moderating effect of the individual (e.

Professionals' treatment goals for long-term benzodiazepine and Z-drugs management: a qualitative study.

Background: Benzodiazepines and Z-drugs (BZD/Z) are frequently prescribed for longer than recommended. Through their interactions with patients taking BZD/Z, primary care and mental health professionals play a key role in the management of this medication.

Aim: To explore how primary care and mental health care professionals set treatment goals with users of long-term BZD/Z.

'A disease like any other' traditional, complementary and alternative medicine use and perspectives in the context of COVID-19 among the Congolese community in Belgium.

Background: As a hard-hit area during the COVID-19 pandemic, Belgium knew the highest mortality among people from sub-Saharan African descent, compared to any other group living in the country. After migration, people often maintain traditional perceptions and habits regarding health and healthcare, resulting in a high prevalence of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine use among different migrant communities in northern urban settings. Despite being the largest community of sub-Saharan African descent in Belgium, little is known on ethnobotanical practices of the Belgian Congolese community.

Medicinal plants cultivated in urban home gardens in Heredia, Costa Rica.

Background: Urban ethnobotanical research in Costa Rica is rather rare and home gardens are poorly studied so far. Investigating their biodiversity is crucial in gathering knowledge on the uses of this particular flora, especially related to the owners' health. This study therefore explores the diversity and knowledge of medicinal plants of private garden owners from three different urban neighborhoods in Heredia, Costa Rica, an thus far understudied area.

And they slept happily ever after: Online interpretive repertoires on the use of benzodiazepines and z-drugs.

Drawing on a critical social-psychological framework for discourse analysis, data from a popular forum for people over 50 were analysed to study how the habitual use of benzodiazepines and Z-drugs (BZD/Z) is discursively negotiated by Flemish older adults. We present five different repertoires (risk and addiction; alternative pathways; suffering; rationalisation; cessation) that illustrate how a pharmaceutical imaginary of these medications is constructed online and how posters act as reflexive users taking on a health role. Most repertoires emerge from a tacit norm on the undesirability of medication use for sleeping problems.

Mind the Gate: General Practitioner's Attitudes Towards Depressed Patients with Diverse Migration Backgrounds.

This study aims to examine (a) whether there are differences in general practitioners' (GPs) attitudes towards native Belgian patients, patients of foreign descent and asylum seeking patients who all express symptoms of major depression, and (b) whether these differences depend on GPs' experience with cultural competency training and interethnic contact. Using a video vignette study among 404 Flemish (Belgium) GPs, we find evidence of a provider bias. While GPs regard a patient of foreign descent as less trustworthy and less able to adhere to medical recommendations than a native Belgian patient, they also hold more pessimistic views on a potential recovery of an asylum seeking patient.

Collision tumor: a colonic adenocarcinoma and a gastric adenocarcinoma.

Background: Collision tumors are defined as the juxtaposition of two histologically distinct tumors, which form a single mass, without histological mixing of the two tissues. They are extremely rare, especially in the digestive tract.

Clinical Presentation: An 81-year-old patient was admitted for anemia, diarrhea and palpable abdominal mass.

Assessing Provider Bias in General Practitioners' Assessment and Referral of Depressive Patients with Different Migration Backgrounds: Methodological Insights on the Use of a Video-Vignette Study.

Although the prevalence of common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, is higher among people with a migration background, these groups are generally underrepresented in all forms of institutionalized mental health care. At the root of this striking discrepancy might be unequal referral by health care practitioners. In this article we describe the development of a quasi-experimental video vignette methodology to assess potential forms of unequal diagnosing, treatment and referral patterns, based on clients' migration background and asylum status.

The silver lining of greying: Ageing discourses and positioning of ageing persons in the field of social health insurance.

Contemporary ageing discourses and policies perceive being active as the key to a good later life and thereby focus on individual responsibility and self-care. Drawing on website articles and press releases of Belgian sickness fund agencies, this study analyses the ageing discourses and positioning of ageing persons of these organisations. A discourse analysis was performed using positioning theory to analyse how sickness fund agencies discursively construct the ageing process and position ageing persons, and to investigate how these positioning acts are related to sickness fund agencies' roles as social insurer, social movement, social entrepreneur and private insurer.

Identity in a medicine cabinet: Discursive positions of Andean migrants towards their use of herbal remedies in the United Kingdom.

This study explores different rationales for using herbal remedies among people from Andean descent in the United Kingdom, using positioning theory as a conceptual framework. By analysing processes of positioning in narratives about healthcare choices conducted with 40 Bolivian and Peruvian migrants in London (between 2005 and 2009), we examine in which ways talking about personal preferences for herbal medicine can be constitutive of one's health identity. The results reveal three distinct discursive repertoires that frame the use of herbal remedies either as a tradition, a health-conscious consumer choice, or as a coping strategy, each allowing specific health identity outcomes.

From economic survival to recreation: contemporary uses of wild food and medicine in rural Sweden, Ukraine and NW Russia.

Background: There are many ethnobotanical studies on the use of wild plants and mushrooms for food and medicinal treatment in Europe. However, there is a lack of comparative ethnobotanical research on the role of non-wood forest products (NWFPs) as wild food and medicine in local livelihoods in countries with different socio-economic conditions. The aim of this study was to compare the present use of wild food and medicine in three places representing different stages of socio-economic development in Europe.

Pure transumbilical SILS gastric bypass with mechanical circular gastrojejunal anastomosis feasibility.

Background: Since Wittgrove introduced the laparoscopic version of the gastric bypass in 1994, the interest still remains in the decrease of the abdominal wall trauma in order to optimize the benefits of laparoscopy on postoperative pain, cosmesis, hospital stay, and convalescence in bariatric patients. This work is to report the feasibility of gastric bypass surgery by a pure transumbilical single-incision laparoscopic surgery (SILS) with a mechanical circular gastrojejunal anastomosis.

Methods: Thirty-four patients (10 males and 24 females) were offered to receive gastric bypass with circular mechanical gastrojejunal anastomosis by Single Incision Laparoscopic Surgery (SILS) using pure transumbilical access.

Resilience of Andean urban ethnobotanies: a comparison of medicinal plant use among Bolivian and Peruvian migrants in the United Kingdom and in their countries of origin.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Analysing why and how ethnobotanical traditions 'survive' is important for a better understanding of migrants' health care behaviour. This study investigates the use of traditional medicinal plants among first generation migrants from Bolivia and Peru in London, in relation to practices among their peers in their respective home countries in order to assess changes in traditional health care among newcomer communities.

Materials And Methods: A total of 98 semi-structured interviews were conducted in London (UK), Cochabamba (Bolivia) and Lima (Peru).

[A huge inguino-scrotal hernia].

We report herein a case of a 76 year-old-man, who presented a huge left inguino-scrotal hernia. Laparoscopic reduction of the hernia contents and hernia repair through an inguinal approach were performed. No recurrence was observed two years and a half postoperatively.