Traditional medicine has role to play, WHO

Swazi traditional healers emphasised the need to integrate their services into the formal healthcare system at a recent World Health Organisation (WHO) workshop in the capital, Mbabane. "We are tired of being separated from the hospitals and clinics, and looked down upon by the medical establishment, even though we treat a majority of the people of this country," said Samuel Nxumalo, a traditional healer from Shiselweni region in the south. The workshop was held to commemorate the second African Traditional Medicine Day, with the theme 'Moving the African Health Agenda Forward with Traditional Medicine'. Previous attempts by the Ministry of Health to reach out to the country's unknown number of traditional healers - the diviner/healers called sangomas and the traditional pharmacists called inyangas - have been short-lived. Dr Priscilla Dlamini, a lecturer at the Faculty of Health Services at the University of Swaziland's Mbabane campus, said a constitution for a traditional healers' organisation was being drafted. Healers, who tend to work in isolation and mainly in rural areas, need to gather to agree on its contents, she said. Once an organisation was established, the healers were told, donor funding could be secured for such projects as the identification and protection of indigenous medicinal plants in wilderness areas, and educating healers in AIDS prevention. WHO's Regional Director for Africa, Dr Ebrahim Malik Samba, said in a statement that "the WHO has developed model tools for institutionalising African traditional medicine in health systems", and offered assistance in developing a national regulatory, legal and policy framework that could make it possible for Swazi traditional healers to work within the healthcare system. Although most traditional healers practice openly and many Swazis use healers as their health providers, a colonial-era law from 1905 criminalises the practice of traditional healing and refers to Swazi healers as "witch doctors". The act has not been enforced since independence in 1968, but neither has it been amended or voided, which rankles traditional healers. The spirit of cooperation at the workshop was not unanimous. Some healers, suspicious of health ministry officials, said they would not be satisfied with a change in legal status and a governing body for traditional healers, and called on government to establish a separate ministry for traditional healers. "Research indicates clearly that the two parties work differently. It would be very difficult for us to work under the Ministry of Health because some of the people there do not believe in traditional healing," veteran healer Nhlavana Maseko said. A cabinet source told IRIN that the chances of such a ministry being created were "less than zero". Dr Sydney Nkambule of the WHO's Health Education Unit agreed with calls by some traditional healers for a law to penalise those of their colleagues who claim to cure AIDS, profiting from the desperate hopes of infected Swazis when no such cure exists.