Indigenous health contributions to health education
---------------------------------------------------
TO MAURICE and fellow afro-netters
I read your SEA-AIDS posting on health-l 19/11/1997.
Congratulations for your enlightened stance.
I would like to network with you concerning this issue and for now
would like to inform you that at Traditional Healer Organisation
(THO) we work along the lines of traditional healers collaborating
with whichever sector concerning preventive health education, general
health education, traditional primary health care delivery and poli-
cies, wider health lawmaking, etc.
It is high time that indigenous health sector is deliberated from the
umbrella held above its head by biomedical national health ministries
of the world. All indigenous structures should receive 'direct' lo-
gistic and financial support which gives them an edge in the struggle
to indigenous people's self-determination. THO invites suggestions
for the establishment of a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural
pressure group which cannot be ignored. Contact us if you are inter-
ested with your wish to join and ideas how to set this up and run it.
It is exactly insights like yours Maurice, which are in fact realised
since the seventies (WHO - Alma Ata 1978), which have not been pro-
pelled and perpetuated enough because of a spectrum of ideological
and other constraints on indigenous people's self-development the
chance to dominate health education and policy making thinking.
Time to go forward this time allowing all sectors, health systems to
follow and develop on their own accord but in accordance with a
larger goal:
'A BETTER LIFE FOR ALL IN THE 21ST CENTURY'
The fact that many indigenous groups, i.e. indigenous healers, did
not enjoy much formal education (although that is changing fast)
should not be an excuse anymore for some opportunistic structures of
modern society to hijack the cultural needs of people on the ground.
The indigenous people need academics, or/and just people with good
common sense, to help them formulate their 'real' wants and needs, to
help them with lobbying governments and lawmakers to acknowledge
them.
A warm thank you Maurice,
Regards,
Hugo Van Damme
Project Co-ordinator
Traditional Healer Organisation for Africa
mailto:NGOMA@alpha.futurenet.co.za
--
Send mail for the `AFRO-NETS' conference to `afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org'.
Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org'.