This report indicates that about 20 percent of Africans who seek medical care first consult traditional healers. Patients tend to consult modern health care services for infectious or acute diseases, or those for which modern health care has been shown to be highly effective. But patients tend to consult traditional practitioners for chronic diseases, for diseases related to psychological or social disruption or to reproductive systems, for diseases that are slow to respond to treatment or deemed to be"magical"in origin. The prestige and credibility of traditional healers have been waning in the face of modernization and an increasingly educated public. Even so many highly educated people consult traditional practitioners. A survey in Ibadan of two groups - one educated elite, the other a traditional, less privileged group - found that roughly 70percent of both groups used traditional health care, particularly traditional drugs. The author shows that traditional medicine is an important source of health care for significant number of Africans and that traditional healers, particularly those who wield authority within their communities, are an important human resource for health care.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.