IHN Rural Health Conference in Durban
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Dear friends,
This is a response to my friend Hugo Van Damme in South Africa who
just wrote that the on-going conference in Durban with the theme "The
Rural Practitioner - a Model of Health Care for the 21st Century"
has absolutely no sessions devoted to the role of the traditional
healer and indigenous medicine in improving the health of rural Afri-
can families.
I confirmed this when I just now reviewed the conference agenda on
their website at:
http://www.dbn.lia.net/comm/rhc
These are the situations we are up against in trying to bring about a
greater understanding of the values of indigenous healing and promote
greater collaboration between traditional and modern health practi-
tioners. If we don't speak out, rural populations will continue to
suffer from not benefiting from health programs that combine the best
of all cultures, modern and indigenous.
I want to point out that the World Health Organisation recommended at
its 1978 Declaration of Alma Ata on Primary Health Care, that,
..."governments give high priority to the full utilisation of human
resources by defining the role, supportive skills, and attitudes re-
quired for each category of health worker according to the functions
that need to be carried out to ensure effective primary health care,
and by developing teams composed of community health workers, other
developmental workers, intermediate personnel, nurses, midwives, phy-
sicians, and, where applicable, TRADITIONAL PRACTITIONERS AND
TRADITIONAL BIRTH ATTENDANTS (caps, mine)".
In a later recommendation, 1985, WHO stated that, "Traditional health
practitioners .....constitute a major and valuable reserve of human
Resources that must be better utilised within every country's na-
tional health service, if the health status of populations is to be
improved."
The statement went on to support training for traditional practitio-
ners to for providing services in AIDS prevention and control, health
education, counselling and family support activities.
My more recent evaluation for WHO of selected projects that had
trained traditional healers to provide primary health services con-
firmed the above statement.
Do any of our readers know of projects where indigenous healers are
working and what the outcomes are?
Best wishes,
Wilbur Hoff
International Child Resource Institute
mailto:wilburhoff@aol.com
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