'Natural Health Village' Report (2)
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Critical reflections on the 'Natural Health Village' report of the Da-
kar 1998 conference on incorporation of traditional healing into modern
health sector:
Here we go, issues which come to the fore for me when I read the actual
Natural Health Village article (1/98):
# the old debate of incorporation or collaboration does not seem to
have been resolved satisfactorily when it can be made the main topic
of an international conference;
# I could not believe that there was talk of a "growing interest" in
traditional medicine practices among the population of i.e. Senegal
where traditional health has been prominent since time in memorial;
# the wishful thinking of modern positivist science demonstrates itself
once again when the scientific Research minister Louise Correa
"called for traditional medicine to be made "more acceptable" and
"more scientific". In other words do away with the useless, unscien-
tific and unpopular sector of traditional health by keeping up modern
scientist appearances! Anyway this reflects on us, the so called
knowledgeable traditional health sector stakeholders, other posi-
tively interested parties and medical anthropological supporters, be-
cause whole ministers of Africa and the world keep producing such un-
informed statements. She hardly gave any boost to traditional medi-
cine. It is exactly for this reason that discussion groups like IHN
have to push their weight around far more and influence world health
opinion!! I cannot emphasize this enough. Only more militant atti-
tudes will drive the message home that traditional healing sector is
a full and autonomous medical health system with its own problems and
development hick ups not different from other health related and non-
related sectors that seek to improve quality of life of indigenous
communities;
# excuse me but grafting bits of traditional medicine into modern
practice is not the answer to the need for recognition of the auton-
omy of the traditional medical system so much needed so that it can
evolve and develop on its own terms in the light of cultural self-
determination. Any other indecisive scenario are simply playing into
the hands of the scientists like minister Correa;
I quote: "western interest as the best bet for survival for a form of
medicine whose roots lie in African culture but whose development
more often than not grew out of economic necessity in areas where
hospitals and doctors were either too far away or too costly."
Comment to this particular paragraph seems hardly necessary because
how can western interest be the way out for the oppression tradi-
tional healing experiences by biomedical western medicine. Tradi-
tional medicine is offered some space to be practised as a secondary
solution to biomedicine when the economical situation demands it.
# Mr. Gbodossou needed 20 years in the African health setting to real
ize "some sort of coordination" between healers and doctors "is
inevitable".
# It would be interesting to have Dr. E. Green and Dr. Wilbur Hoff re-
act to the serious under estimation of number of healers per number
of local population as given by Dia. For Dia, countries like Senegal,
Ghana and Swaziland count one healer for every 1,000 to 1,200 resi-
dents. He said this should be seen as an asset provided the distinc-
tion is made "between healers and quacks".
# Dia further confuses solving the shortcomings of biomedicine in
Europe and the United States by often highly controversial complemen-
tary alternative medicine adapted for the western consumer with the
indigenous local historical prominent traditional healing practices
in regions like Africa. Modern medicine has come to be complementary
to traditional medical practices in Africa and has forgotten its
place in the euphoria of colonialism. This situation has led to bar-
rel of the gun legislative processes still continued today in Africa.
It is as much an illusion to be able to import an un-adapted modern
medicine into Africa indigenous setting as it is impossible to apply
Clinton democracy unaltered in Africa;
# Dia really upsets in his final statement:
"Africa must avoid losing something it already possesses, just at
the moment when the West is showing the most interest in it", he
said.
Thus African traditional healing has no right to disappear until the
west has decided what its future will be!!
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I hope to stir and that is made easy I think by the very poor show in
Dakar. I cannot understand why traditional healing stakeholders where
not heard! Who was invited from the indigenous people and the tradi-
tional healers? If anyone was.
Hugo Van Damme
Project Co-ordinator
Traditional Healer Organisation for Africa
mailto:NGOMA@alpha.futurenet.co.za
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