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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Improving Collaboration Between Traditional and Conventional Medicine: Views from Urban Healers in Cameroon
| Panel |
66. Traditional religion and healing in Africa and the role of the inner senses
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| Paper ID | 173 |
| Author(s) |
Hillenbrand, Emily
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The World Health Organization recognizes that traditional medicine can be a vital health-care resource in developing countries and has encouraged governments to adopt policies to officially acknowledge the practice of traditional medicine. In Cameroon, however, traditional medicine continues to be ignored or condemned by most public health policy makers. As a result, there is a critical lack of communication between conventional and traditional medicine practitioners at a time when drastic cuts in health services mean that the poorest segment of the population relies principally on traditional healers for essential health services.
As carriers of an inherited tradition or bestowed knowledge, urban healers play an important role in restoring their patients’ spiritual and social well-being as well as physical health. However, in the urban setting, the practice of traditional healing faces unique challenges and opportunities. In particular, street peddlers make a living selling fake medicines, threatening the reputations of genuine healers. Moreover, a recent study conducted in Yaounde showed that many traditionl practitioners are HIV-positive, and that ritual practices such as scarring and group circumcisions are contributing to the spread of HIV-AIDS. The fact that many Cameroonian patients use conventional and traditional health-care simultaneously calls for an improved dialogue and increased interaction between practitioners of conventional and traditional medicines.
This qualitative study examines the perspectives of some 30 traditional healers in urban Cameroon, as they try to bridge the gap between their medicine and conventional medicine, a communication that is vital for the public well-being. The study results discuss healers’ views about conventional medicine, the contemporary problems they see in the practice of traditional healing, the criteria by which they distinguish between true healers from ‘charlatans,’ the information they share among themselves, and the ways in which they believe that conventional and traditional practices can enhance one another.
The results show that while most traditional healers are eager for official recognition, they tend to mistrust the public health sector, fearing that officials and researchers who contact them do so in order to patent their medicines or steal their secrets. Nonetheless, many urban healers interact with or incorporate some elements of conventional medicine, or of other healers’ traditions, into their own practices. The findings show that traditional healers often use intuitive knowledge of anatomy and spiritual diagnostic methods to treat cases that they believe should be handled in hospital. Many healers are engaged in a process of semi-formal registration with healers’ associations, which fosters a degree of knowledge-sharing, standardization, and self-evaluation among healers. In interviews, most healers stated that conventional medicine was not a threat to traditional practices. While they acknowledged that information from conventional medicine could improve their practice, “orthodox” medicine could never replace the holistic, spiritual approach of indigenous medicine.
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