The conceptions of disease and its formulation under different paradigms have made it clear that the approach towards health and medicine has never been completely detached from ecology. Health and disease are thought to be the products of the interaction among three key elements: the agent, the host, and the environment. This paper is an attempt to develop an approach that encompasses the concerns surrounding an understanding of disease ecology and a patient's behaviour during treatment. Using the example of tuberculosis patients put under DOTS, which disregards the patient's say in decision-making, it analyses the implications for the larger health issue using the political ecology approach.
