Traditional Medical Practice in Contemporary Ghana: A Dying or Growing “Profession”?: A Response to Ahiakpor

Abstract

In assessing whether the number of practitioners of traditional medicine has been increasing or declining, the best method of analysis would have been to compare series of data over several years. The problem, however, is that such data are non-existent. In the absence of such useful information, an index number technique was employed to gain some insights into how the population of healers is changing in two study areas in Ghana (1987a). In interpreting the results derived from the index number technique, consideration of the impact of such factors as migration, mortality of healers, and abandonment of the medical profession as raised by James Ahiakpor is pertinent. Before commenting on the influence of these factors in the study areas, it must be reiterated that it is essential to disaggregate the practitioners of traditional medicine when accounting for changes in the practice of indigenous medicine. This affords the opportunity to find out exactly how the different types of healers have responded or are responding to the forces of change. In his comments, Ahiakpor mistakenly attributes the reasons given by some herbalists and cult-healers to all the various categories of healers. As implied in my article, in view of the fact that recruitment of herbalists and culthealers is voluntary, the recruitment level of these practitioners is more likely to fall in the future because of the reasons I cited. Priests and priestesses usually have almost no choice when they are called. In spite of recent attempts to disobey such calls by would-be priests and priestesses for reasons also cited in my article, quite often, they are compelled to undergo training to be ushered into the priest-hood. The cultural belief that the gods never die when their priests and priestesses pass away appears to be a logical explanation for the continuous recruitment of priest-healers. With regard to faith-healers, their increase in the study area is not surprising in view of the continent-wide phenomenon of proliferation of Independent African churches (Ujanga 1979; Oosthuizen 1985). To comment more directly on the factors identified above, the question is to what extent has the process of migration affected the increase or decline of the healers' population in the study area? Healers were asked to indicate former places in which they had lived and practised medicine (Anyinam 1987b, 158-164). More than two-thirds (sixty-eight percent) in the rural survey had