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This is the VOA Special English Health Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | http Rural areas of India may have few doctors or other health resources. Instead, many people use traditional healers. These faith-based healers, or witch doctors, sometimes have strange theories about how the body works. In West Bengal, for example, some people have long believed that getting bitten by a dog leads to the birth of puppies. Dr. Kumar Kanti Ghosh is a psychiatrist. He helped document this belief in so-called puppy pregnancy syndrome for an article. It appeared in the Lancet medical journal in two thousand three. His interest started when a nine-year-old boy came to his health clinic about ten days after being bitten by a dog. The boy believed that he was pregnant with a puppy. And the boy’s parents said he was starting to sound like a dog. A healer named Budheswar Singh says his mixture of yogurt and herbs has cured many people. “If the man is brought to me on time, I can give him my medicine and he will be all right.” Sanjay Samui is a medical doctor who wishes people would stop believing ideas like this. “They are uneducated village people — they still hold on to such superstitions,” he says. He tells everyone that in no situation can a puppy be born inside a human body. The national government spends about one and a half percent of India’s gross domestic product on health care. This is among the lowest rates in the world. It means faith healers are the only choice in some …

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