.png)
November 28, 2017 at 03:32PM
Nigeria News today & Breaking news ▷ Read Nigerian newspapers 24/7
Wale Akinola
Traditional African medicine is an alternative medicine discipline involving indigenous herbalism and African spirituality, typically involving diviners, midwives, and herbalists.
Practitioners of traditional African medicine claim to be able to cure various and diverse conditions such as cancers, psychiatric disorders, high blood pressure, cholera, most venereal diseases, epilepsy, asthma, eczema, fever, anxiety, depression, benign prostatic hyperplasia, urinary tract infections, gout, and healing of wounds and burns and even Ebola.
Diagnosis is reached through spiritual means and a treatment is prescribed, usually consisting of a herbal remedy that is considered to have not only healing abilities but also symbolic and spiritual significance.
Traditional African medicine, with its belief that illness is not derived from chance occurrences, but through spiritual or social imbalance, differs greatly from modern scientific medicine, which is technically and analytically based.
READ ALSO: Governor El-Rufai reduces workforce in all Kaduna local government councils
In the 21st century, modern pharmaceuticals and medical procedures remain inaccessible to large numbers of African people due to their relatively high cost and concentration of health facilities in urban centres.
Before the establishment of science-based medicine, traditional medicine was the dominant medical system for millions of people in Africa but the arrival of the Europeans was a noticeable turning point in the history of this ancient tradition and culture.
Herbal medicines in Africa are generally not adequately researched, and are weakly regulated. There is a lack of the detailed documentation of the traditional knowledge, which is generally transferred orally. Serious adverse effects can result from misidentification or misuse of healing plants.
Science has, in the past, considered methods of traditional knowledge as primitive and backward. Under colonial rule, traditional diviner-healers were outlawed because they were considered by many nations to be practitioners of witchcraft and magic, and declared illegal by the colonial authorities, creating a war against aspects of the indigenous culture that were seen as witchcraft.
During this time, attempts were also made to control the sale of herbal medicines. After Mozambique obtained independence in 1975, attempts to control traditional medicine went as far as sending diviner-healers to re-education camps.
As colonialism and Christianity spread through Africa, colonialists built general hospitals and Christian missionaries built private ones, with the hopes of making headway against widespread diseases.
Little was done to investigate the legitimacy of these practices, as many foreigners believed that the native medical practices were pagan and superstitious and could only be suitably fixed by inheriting Western methods according to Onwuanibe.
During times of conflict, opposition has been particularly vehement as people are more likely to call on the supernatural realm. Consequently, doctors and health practitioners have, in most cases, continued to shun traditional practitioners despite their contribution to meeting the basic health needs of the population.
In recent years, the treatments and remedies used in traditional African medicine have gained more appreciation from researchers in science. Developing countries have begun to realize the high costs of modern health care systems and the technologies that are required, thus proving Africa's dependence to it.
Due to this, interest has recently been expressed in integrating traditional African medicine into the continent's national health care systems. An African healer embraced this concept by making a 48-bed hospital, the first of its kind, in Kwa-Mhlanga, South Africa, which combines traditional methods with homeopathy, iridology, and other Western healing methods, even including some traditional Asian medicine.
However, the highly sophisticated technology involved in modern medicine, which is beginning to integrate into Africa's health care system, could possibly destroy Africa's deep-seated cultural values.
Diagnostics
The diagnoses and chosen methods of treatment in traditional African medicine rely heavily on spiritual aspects, often based on the belief that psycho-spiritual aspects should be addressed before medical aspects.
In African culture, it is believed that "nobody becomes sick without sufficient reason." Traditional practitioners look at the ultimate "who" rather than the "what" when locating the cause and cure of an illness, and the answers given come from the cosmological beliefs of the people.
Rather than look at the medical or physical reasons behind an illness, traditional healers attempt to determine the root cause underlying it, which is believed to stem from a lack of balance between the patient and his or her social environment or the spiritual world, not by natural causes.
Natural causes are, in fact, not seen as natural at all, but manipulations of spirits or the gods. For example, sickness is sometimes said to be attributed to guilt by the person, family, or village for a sin or moral infringement.
The illness, therefore, would stem from the displeasure of the gods or God, due to an infraction of universal moral law. According to the type of imbalance the individual is experiencing, an appropriate healing plant will be used, which is valued for its symbolic and spiritual significance as well as for its medicinal effect.
When a person falls ill, a traditional practitioner uses incantations to make a diagnosis. Incantations are thought to give the air of mystical and cosmic connections. Divination is typically used if the illness is not easily identified, otherwise, the sickness may be quickly diagnosed and given a remedy.
If divination is required, then the practitioner will advise the patient to consult a diviner who can further give a diagnosis and cure. Contact with the spirit world through divination often requires not only medi*cation, but sacrifices.
Treatments
Traditional practitioners use a wide variety of treatments ranging from "magic" to biomedical methods such as fasting and dieting, herbal therapies, bathing, massage, and surgical procedures. Migraines, coughs, abscesses, and pleurisy are often treated using the method of "bleed-cupping" after which an herbal ointment is applied with follow-up herbal drug.
Animals are also sometimes used to transfer the illness to afterward. Some cultures also rub hot herbal ointment across the patient's eyelids to cure headaches. Malaria is treated by both drinking and using the steam from an herbal mixture.
Fevers are often treated using a steam bath. Also, vomiting is induced, or emetics, in an attempt to cure some diseases. For example, raw beef is soaked in the drink of an alcoholic person to induce vomiting and nausea and treat alcoholism.
Traditional medicinal practitioners
Many traditional medicinal practitioners are people without education, who have rather received knowledge of medicinal plants and their effects on the human body from their forebears. They have a deep and personal involvement in the healing process and protect the therapeutic knowledge by keeping it a secret.
In a manner similar to orthodox medicinal practice, the practitioners of traditional medicine specialize in particular areas of their profession. Some, such as the inyangas of Swaziland are experts in herbalism, while others, such as the South African sangomas, are experts in spiritual healing as diviners, and others specialize in a combination of both forms of practice.
PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigeria’s #1 new app
There are also traditional bone setters and birth attendants. Herbalists are becoming more and more popular in Africa with an emerging herb trading market in Durban that is said to attract between 700,000 and 900,000 traders per year from South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique.
Smaller trade markets exist in virtually every community. Their knowledge of herbs has been invaluable in African communities and they were the only ones who could gather them in most societies.
Midwives also make extensive use of indigenous plants to aid childbirth. African healers commonly "describe and explain illness in terms of social interaction and act on the belief that religion permeates every aspect of human existence."
Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had previously reported that research showed that eating dates can improve almost everything in a person’s body: from aiding digestion to lowering the risk of abdominal cancer.
N1,500 for health of Nigerians - on NAIJ.com TV
Source: Naija.ng
http://ift.tt/eA8V8J
Types of health practitioners in Africa
https://www.naija.ng
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment