Traditional healing practice using medicinal herbs

Abstract

Philip S Kubukeli spent 15 years trainit as a traditional healer. He founded the Western Cape Traditional Healers Association. He is a member of the South African Traditional Medicines Research Group, and he undertakes training of students who want to become traditional healers. African traditional medical practitioners are extensively used in South Africa and are an important national health-care resource. Traditional healers are potentially valuable partners in the delivery of health care. They are already available, ubiquitous in most cases, and share the same culture, beliefs, and values as their patients. Their methods are effective in certain illnesses (eg, psychosomatic illnesses) as is their use of local herbs and medicinal plants for therapeutic purposes. They are skilled in interpersonal relations including counselling, and can fill the vacuum in health care created by the shortage of biomedical health personnel for delivery of primary health care. They are also prepared to consider safer practices and to eliminate those traditional remedies and practices harmful to patients. Health is defined by the WHO as a complete state of physical and mental wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. This definition is in line with the practice of traditional healers who look at the whole body (physical, mental, spiritual), whereas biomedicine heals only the affected parts of the body and is forever looking for germs. It is generally accepted that the African traditional healer understands the patient's beliefs about their illness, and that concepts of health within the framework of African culture are more social than they are biological. Traditional healing is to a large extent premised on this. Part of the appeal of traditional healing is its historic approach that views the patient as more than simply a sum of organ systems and neurophysiological hydraulics. Traditional healers were looked upon by the govemment, missionaries, and biomedicine as charlatans and unscrupulous antagonists of biomedicine who exploited an ignorant population. But African traditional healing practices are based on beliefs that existed long before the development and spread of modern medicine. These practices vary widely between different African countries, in keeping with their social and cultural heritages and traditions. Traditional healing expertise is intricately intertwined with cultural and cosmic phenomenology. Although it is not possible to find a single African traditional healing system, the differences between cultures south of the Sahara are sufficiently small for generalisations to be made within certain limits. To understand the African traditional healer and the whole traditional process, one needs to understand African religion. The whole African belief system is so fundamental that any form of healing process that ignores these beliefs is psychologically unsatisfactory and in some cases unaccountable. It is the only coherent system that has maintained the social equilibrium of the African people for generations. In the Black culture of Africa you cannot become a traditional healer until you have experienced a call to priesthood. This is recognised as an illness, the symptoms of which are caused by ancestral spirits who wish to possess the future traditional healer. It is a holy calling that comes from God via ancestral spirits. The sickness may come at any age, but is most prevalent during adolescence and the menopause. Once the call to priesthood is diagnosed, the patient is immediately placed under the case of the traditional healer and enters training as an initiate. Training can last up to 15 years, depending on culture, religion, custom, and ethnic group. In the African context, illness always has a reason. The reason is the most important aspect of the disease–more important than an exposition of the illness itself. In the African traditional setting, the question “Why am I ill?” is more important than “What is the nature of my illness?”. It follows, therefore, that a detailed biomedical explanation based on the germ theory is foreign and irrelevant to African concepts of illness. The medicinal use of herbs is said to be as old as mankind itself. WHO estimates that herbalism is three to four times more commonly practised than I conventional medicine worldwide. And even conventional doctors rely heavily on plant-based medicines: an increasing number of prescriptions are plant-based. Although many herbs and plants used medicinally in South Africa today were imported from Europe, there is a vast array of indigenous medicinal plants here too. More than 400 species of indigenous plants are sold commercially as traditional medicines in KwaZulu-Natal. Traditional medicine using herbs is widely practised throughout the rest of southern Africa. Some plants are so popular that the demand for them is threatening their very survival on the subcontinent. Today, there is increased sensitivity towards traditional healers' issues. Along with the rest of the world, the South African Department of Health is looking at improving conditions for traditional healers' associations. In addition, the National Indigenous Knowledge Systems Programme is working towards registration with the objective that it will lead to the protection of intellectual property rights, equitable compensation, promotion, and the improvement of traditonal healing systems.