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Free Downloads
Hesperian has made a commitment to publish online versions of all of our books and to keep those online editions up-to-date, incorporating all corrections and revisions as they are made.
Presently we have materials from the following publications:
Where There Is No Doctor
Where Women Have No Doctor
A Book for Midwives
HIV Health and Your Community
Helping Children Who Are Deaf
A factory worker's guide to organizing for safe jobs and healthy communities
A community guide to environmental health
Women's Health Exchange
We are happy to have other organizations link to our online publications, but in order to prevent out-of-date or altered editions of our publications from being accessed online, we do not allow Hesperian publications to be posted on other sites without our explicit permission.
We will be posting online versions of all of our publications in the coming months, so please visit our site again soon to see what new resources are available.
All of the materials below are in PDF format. If you have Adobe Reader installed on your computer, click a link below and the material will open in that program. Use the program save function to download the file to your local disk. If you do not have the program installed, click the link and you will be prompted to select a location on your computer for download. You can download Adobe Reader free from the Adobe Web Site.
Where There Is No Doctor
We are happy to have other organizations link to our online publications, but in order to prevent out-of-date or altered editions of our publications from being accessed online, we do not allow Hesperian publications to be posted on other sites without our explicit permission.
The entire book is now available for download:
- Front matter: Cover, How to Use This Book, Acknowledgements
- Table of Contents: Introduction, Note About This New Edition
- Brown Pages: Words To The Village Health Worker
- Chapter 1: Home Cures and Popular Beliefs
- Chapter 2: Sicknesses that are Often Confused
- Chapter 3: How to Examine a Sick Person
- Chapter 4: How to Take Care of a Sick Person
- Chapter 5: Healing Without Medicines
- Chapter 6: Right and Wrong Use of Modern Medicines
- Chapter 7: Antibiotics: What They Are and How To Use Them
- Chapter 8: How To Measure and Give Medicine
- Chapter 9: Instructions and Precautions for Injections
- Chapter 10: First Aid
- Chapter 11: Nutrition: What to Eat to Be Healthy
- Chapter 12: Prevention: How to Avoid Many Sicknesses
- Chapter 13: Some Very Common Sicknesses
- Chapter 14: Serious Illnesses That Need Special Medical Attention
- Chapter 15: Skin Problems
- Chapter 16: The Eyes
- Chapter 17: The Teeth, Gums, and Mouth
- Chapter 18: The Urinary System and the Genitals
- Chapter 19: Information for Mothers and Midwives
- Chapter 20: Family Planning- Having the Number of Children You Want
- Chapter 21: Health and Sicknesses of Children
- Chapter 22: Health and Sicknesses of Older People
- Chapter 23: The Medicine Kit
- The Green Pages: The Uses, Dosage, and Precautions for Medicines
- The Blue Pages: New Information
- Vocabulary: Explaining Difficult Words
- Information: Addresses for Teaching Materials, Dosage Blanks, Patient Report, Information on Vital Signs, Abbreviations, Weight, Volume
- Index (Yellow Pages)
Where Women Have No Doctor
We are happy to have other organizations link to our online publications, but in order to prevent out-of-date or altered editions of our publications from being accessed online, we do not allow Hesperian publications to be posted on other sites without our explicit permission.
The entire book is now available for download:
- Front matter- Chapter 1: About This Book, How to Use This Book, Table of Contents, Women's Health Is a Community Issue
- Chapter 2: Solving Health Problems
- Chapter 3: The Medical System
- Chapter 4: Understanding Our Bodies
- Chapter 5: Health Concerns of Girls
- Chapter 6: Pregnancy and Childbirth
- Chapter 7: Breastfeeding
- Chapter 8: Growing Older
- Chapter 9: Women With Disabilities
- Chapter 10: Staying Healthy
- Chapter 11: Eating for Good Health
- Chapter 12: Sexual Health
- Chapter 13: Family Planning
- Chapter 14: Infertility
- Chapter 15: Abortion and Complications of Abortion
- Chapter 16: Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs)
- Chapter 17: HIV/AIDS
- Chapter 18: Violence Against Women
- Chapter 19: Rape and Sexual Assault
- Chapter 20: Sex Workers
- Chapter 21: Pain in the Lower Abdomen
- Chapter 22: Abnormal Bleeding from the Vagina
- Chapter 23: Problems of the Urine System
- Chapter 24: Cancer and Growths
- Chapter 25: Tuberculosis
- Chapter 26: Work
- Chapter 27: Mental Health
- Chapter 28: Alcohol and Other Drugs
- Chapter 29: Refugees and Displaced Women
- Chapter 30: Female Genital Cutting
- Chapter 31: Use of Medicines in Women's Health
- The Green Pages: Table of Medicines
- Health Care Skills
- List of Difficult Words
- Where to Get More Information
- Index (Yellow Pages)
A Book for Midwives
We are happy to have other organizations link to our online publications, but in order to prevent out-of-date or altered editions of our publications from being accessed online, we do not allow Hesperian publications to be posted on other sites without our explicit permission.
The entire book is now available for download:
- Table of Contents
- Introduction-Chapter 3: Words to midwives, Treating health problems, A woman's body in pregnancy
- Chapters 4-6: Helping women stay healthy, Preventing infection, Common changes in pregnancy
- Chapters 7-8: Learning a pregnant woman's health history, Prenatal checkups
- Chapters 9-11: Getting ready for labor and birth, Giving good care during labor and birth, Opening: stage 1 of labor
- Chapters 12-13: Pushing: stage 2 of labor, The birth of the placenta: stage 3 of labor
- Chapters 14-16: The first few hours after the birth, The first weeks after the birth, Breastfeeding
- Chapters 17-18: Family Planning, Sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
- Chapter 19: Advanced skills for pregnancy and birth
- Chapters 20-21: The pelvic exam: How to examine a woman's vagina and womb, How to insert an IUD
- Chapter 22: Helping a woman after a pregnancy ends early
- Chapter 23: Manual vacuum aspiration
- Chapter 24-25; Appendices: Getting medical help, Homemade tools and teaching materials, Medicines (green pages), To learn more, Technical and medical words, Index (yellow pages), Due date calculator
women's reproductive health
To buy the complete book, visit our online store
HIV, Health, and Your Community
We are happy to have other organizations link to our online publications, but in order to prevent out-of-date or altered editions of our publications from being accessed online, we do not allow Hesperian publications to be posted on other sites without our explicit permission.
The entire book is now available for download:
- Table of Contents and Introduction
- Chapters 1, 2, and 3: What is HIV? The Symptoms of HIV infection, Who has HIV?
- Chapters 4 and 5: HIV around the world, Counseling about sexual behavior
- Chapters 6 and 7: The spread of HIV by ways other than sex, HIV testing
- Chapters 8 and 9: Counseling about HIV testing, Social and cultural factors that affect the spread of HIV
- Chapters 10 and 11: How to support and care for a person with HIV, Training HIV health workers
- Chapter 12: Starting community-based HIV projects
- Chapter 13 and Appendix: Getting resources for an HIV project, Treating advanced HIV disease - medicines for HIV, and common infections and their treatment
- Glossary, Resources, and Index
Helping Children Who Are Deaf
We are happy to have other organizations link to our online publications, but in order to prevent out-of-date or altered editions of our publications from being accessed online, we do not allow Hesperian publications to be posted on other sites without our explicit permission.
View and download chapters:
- Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Hearing difficulties and communication
- Chapter 2: Children who cannot hear well need help early
- Chapter 8: Learning to use a sign language
- Chapter 9: Learning to use a spoken language
- Chapter 10: Social Skills
- Chapter 15: Why children lose their hearing and what we can do
A factory worker's guide to organizing for safe jobs and healthy communities
We are happy to have other organizations link to our online publications, but in order to prevent out-of-date or altered editions of our publications from being accessed online, we do not allow Hesperian publications to be posted on other sites without our explicit permission.
A major section of this new book is now available for download: Work dangers and solutions
A community guide to environmental health
We are happy to have other organizations link to our online publications, but in order to prevent out-of-date or altered editions of our publications from being accessed online, we do not allow Hesperian publications to be posted on other sites without our explicit permission.
View and download chapters and fact sheets of this upcoming publication:
- Cholera prevention Fact Sheet English Español
- Sanitation and cleanliness for a healthy environment English Español Français
- Water for life: community water security English Español Français
- Pesticides are poison English Español
- Safe handling of health care waste
The Women's Health Exchange
We are happy to have other organizations link to our online publications, but in order to prevent out-of-date or altered editions of our publications from being accessed online, we do not allow Hesperian publications to be posted on other sites without our explicit permission.
The Women's Health Exchange (published in English) and ¡Saludos! (published in Spanish), are free resources for education and training in women's health. These newsletters are designed to help women and community groups from around the world learn more about each other, share training ideas and information, and promote popular education on women's health.
The following samples are available to view and print in PDF format:
- Women's Health Exchange #11 Access to Health Care for Women with Disabilities
- Women's Health Exchange #12 Saving Lives After Pregnancies End Early
- Women's Health Exchange #8 Improving Women's Sexual Lives
- Activity Sheet for Issue #8 (2 pages)
- ¡Saludos! #8 Cómo mejorar la vida sexual de la mujer (8 pages)
- Guia de actividades para ¡Saludos! #8 (2 pages)
- Women's Health Exchange #9 Alcohol companies target the poor (8 pages)
More issues will be available online soon!




