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...bridging the gap

LAST UPDATE: Friday, 3 July, 1998 00:13 GMT     HEALERS AND DOCTORS                      ...all the news, as it happens
Traditional healers and doctors co-exist: Senegal
 

Eighty-five percent of people in Africa use traditional healers who are held in very high esteem in their communities. At Wednesday evening's community session on alternative and traditional heading, Erick Gbodossou from Senegal related these statistics and said traditional healers represent the best hope for effective AIDS prevention and treatment in developing countries.

But since traditional healers provide the majority of health care in Africa, it only makes sense for modern practitioners to forge alliances with their traditional counterparts. In fact, this has been done in Uganda, where a group has brought traditional healers, both herbalists and spiritualists, into contact with modern medical practitioners, says another session participant, Donna Kabatesi. Noting the scarcity of modern facilities and treatment in Africa, Kabatesi states certain AIDS-related conditions are quite amenable to traditional treatment. For example, she said, herpes zoster has been shown to respond even better to herbal treatments than to acyclovir.

"Traditional healers have one big advantage over modern medicine," Kabatesi said, "in that they have an intimate knowledge of the needs of their communities."

Gbodossou describes a medical centre in Senegal, in which traditional healers and a primary care physician fulfill complementary roles. "Their diagnoses may or may not be identical," Gbodossou says. "For example, a case described by one as ‘pneumonia’ might be called ‘bad wind’ by the other." Excellent results have been achieved in some AIDS-related symptoms, as well as opportunistic infections. "The centre provides an ideal situation for the provision of education and health awareness to the local population," Gbodossou points out.

 

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