Traditional Healers (7)
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reply to Victor Fredlund's 'traditional healers (6)':
if you read my message of 18 May 1998 to AFRO-NETS and MAILADOC
(Healthlink SA) in the 'doctor's dialogue' concerning the new medical
council for South Africa I didn't suggest that traditional healers (TH)
have become Western science based pharmacologists. The suggestion to
have TH's represented was made in reaction to media rumours that SA
minister of health Dr. Zuma intended to have the new council also scru-
tinise the TH's muti (medicine). If in that case the new council would
only be made up of western medicine reps. they would have become TH's.
Anyway even if the new council would only look at Western science based
medicine those medicines involve a large number of African, Indian etc.
medicinal plant based medicines in Western pharmacological form. And in
the light of wide participation and full disclosure the TH's would not
be out of place in a new and innovative council which looks after the
interests of the communities in which TH's operate by scrutinising the
medicines that will reach those communities.
In fact I am saying let us change and break down old barriers of cul-
tural, scientific, economical, political and social nature and provide
the best complementary health care that a regions healers and their re-
spective health systems can come up with in full and open dialogue and
participatory approaches.
Hugo
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Hugo Van Damme
Project Co-ordinator
Traditional Healer Organisation for Africa - NGOMA
mailto:ngoma@alpha.futurenet.co.za
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