Cultural Competence and Global Health: Perspectives for Medical Education - Position paper of the GMA Committee on Cultural Competence and Global Health.

Routine medical care in Germany, Austria and Switzerland is being increasingly impacted by the cultural and linguistic diversity of an ever more complex world. Both at home and as part of international student exchanges, medical students are confronted with different ways of thinking and acting in relation to health and disease. Despite an increasing number of courses on cultural competence and global health at German-speaking medical schools, systematic approaches are lacking on how to integrate this topic into medical curricula.

"Getting by" in a Swiss Tertiary Hospital: the Inconspicuous Complexity of Decision-making Around Patients' Limited Language Proficiency.

Background: While the need to address language barriers to provide quality care for all is generally accepted, little is known about the complexities of decision-making around patients' limited language proficiency in everyday clinical encounters.

Objective: To understand how linguistic complexities shape cross-cultural encounters by incorporating the perspective of both, patients and physicians.

Design: A qualitative hospital study with semi-structured interviews and participant-observation in a Swiss University Hospital.

Hymen Restoration: "My" Discomfort, "Their" Culture, and Women's Missing Voice.

The discourse among medical and scientific communities on hymen restoration is largely missing the voice of women affected. This article calls for a more nuanced reflection on women's real life experiences and the complexities inherent in the negotiation process about the surgery going beyond "ideologies" and the extremes of rape and threats to life. By taking the clinical experience of a woman who requests restoration surgery before her arranged marriage, this article illuminates the grey zone beyond these extremes and explores an individual woman's options for making her own choices.

Restoration of virginity: women's demand and health care providers' response in Switzerland.

Introduction: As a result of transnational migration, health institutions are faced with growing demand for "restoration" of virginity. The practice of hymen reconstruction constitutes a challenge for health care providers in medical, ethical, judicial, social, and cultural dimensions, for which they are not well prepared.

Aim: The aim of the presented nationwide survey was to investigate the experience of Swiss gynecologists with women requesting hymen reconstruction.

Women's experiences of the abortion law in Cameroon: "What really matters".

While prosecutions of women who have had an illegal abortion are rare in Cameroon, women who have a legitimate claim to a legal abortion, e.g. following rape, can rarely take advantage of it.

Abortion in the moral world of the Cameroon grassfields.

Despite high levels of unsafe abortion in Cameroon, remarkably limited attention has been paid to the moral dilemma for women who seek abortions. In-depth interviews were conducted with 65 Cameroonian Grasslands women within a hospital-based study, complemented by participant observation, use of hospital records and interviews with key informants. The paper demonstrates how a hidden moral code on abortion helps women to exercise individual agency despite prevailing moral values.