Traditional healers face a new world

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="04afd5a3.jpg"> <bR> <div> <B>The Botanical Source</B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="04bd2063.jpg"> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Botanical Source"><U><B><IMG SRC="107b8d140.png" border=0 width="141" height="20" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.thebotanicalsource.com/shop" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.thebotanicalsource.com/shop"><U><IMG SRC="11958d140.png" border=0 width="141" height="20" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id22.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A wide range of indigenous seeds from Af"><U><IMG SRC="11948d140.png" border=0 width="141" height="20" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.thebotanicalsource.com/shop/index.php?cPath=28&osCsid=5d55fa2bee3df7b388a151625a1e9916" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.thebotanicalsource.com/shop/i"><U><IMG SRC="11938d140.png" border=0 width="141" height="20" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Articles about African indigenous healin"><U><IMG SRC="10828d140.png" border=0 width="141" height="20" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Us"><U><IMG SRC="11928d140.png" border=0 width="141" height="20" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id23.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Photo Gallery"><U><IMG SRC="11918d140.png" border=0 width="141" height="20" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <div>   <script type="text/javascript" src="http://edge.quantserve.com/quant.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript">_qacct="p-41ZhKYiACxjoQ";quantserve();</script> <noscript> <a href="http://www.quantcast.com/p-41ZhKYiACxjoQ" target="_blank"><img src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-41ZhKYiACxjoQ.gif" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt="Quantcast"/></a> </noscript>   </div> <div>  <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? 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Zungu bent over the objects - goat and lion bones, three shells, two ivory dominoes and a 50-cent piece - to divine what ailed her.</div> <bR> <div> ``Her problem is that she is not living well with her husband," concluded Zungu, an herbalist who heads the National Representative Council of Traditional Healers. ``This is not something a conventional doctor would treat."</div> <bR> <div> Zungu's treatment was indeed unconventional: He heaped four tablespoons of a bark-and-root mulch onto a newspaper and stirred in a pinch of bright pink powder he said would bring good luck. Speaking Zulu, Zungu instructed the patient to cook the mixture the next morning and consume it to induce vomiting, purging her system of evil spirits.</div> <bR> <div> Zungu's methods may be unusual by Western standards, but traditional healers have entered the mainstream in South African health care since Nelson Mandela's African National Congress won the national elections in 1994, bringing a different mindset to the government.</div> <bR> <div> Zungu was one of the first inyangas - spiritual herbalists - to sign up this year for a new health insurance plan that allows patients to choose a traditional healer over a conventional doctor.</div> <bR> <div> ``The culture of an African man is that he is not certain he has been properly treated until he has seen a traditional healer," said Zungu, 62, who has been a full-time inyanga since 1976. ``The problem with most medical aid schemes is that the black man was not getting a choice."</div> <bR> <div> The new insurance program is typical of the sometimes awkward melding of traditional African customs with Western ways that is now taking place in South Africa. The old white-minority government showed little tolerance for African customs while it was building Africa's most advanced health-care system.</div> <bR> <div> Once shunned by Western doctors as sorcerers and charlatans, traditional healers are being recognized for their strengths, particularly in rural areas where conventional health care is scarce or expensive.</div> <bR> <div> Scientists also have come to respect some herbal remedies long employed by traditional healers, which led to such treatments as quinine for malaria.</div> <bR> <div> ``One can't put your head in the ground and say we're going to ignore traditional healers because they're unscientific," said Murray Tonathy, who runs Thamba Administrators Ltd., the private organization that reimburses traditional healers.</div> <bR> <div> Part fortune-teller and part pharmacist, inyangas say they communicate with their ancestors through such means as the bones scattered by patients. They then administer combinations of herbs, minerals, oils and animal parts as purgatives, poultices or enemas. The treatments are called muti.</div> <bR> <div> Another type of traditional healer, a sangoma, uses a mixture of divination, witchcraft and muti to treat patients. Most babies born in South Africa are delivered by sangomas.</div> <bR> <div> Traditional healers say that, unlike conventional doctors, who are more concerned with treating the specific source of a specific disease, they take a holistic approach to health problems. Often the family is called in so that its combined spiritual powers may be invoked.</div> <bR> <div> The council has a disciplinary committee to handle complaints of overcharging and maltreatment. Healers such as Zungu say the free market does a good job of controlling impostors. ``If you do good things, people will talk well about you in planes, trains and taxis," he said. ``People will come to you. If you are a quack and rob them, people will run away from you."</div> <bR> <div> The insurance plan's administrators do not worry that the system will be abused. Unlike American managed-care programs that reimburse patients for some or all health-care costs, the medical aid program for traditional healers is more like a savings plan. It provides patients with a limited number of vouchers depending upon how much money they and their employers contribute.</div> <bR> <div> ``Those patients who use up all their vouchers too quickly are only stealing from themselves," Tonathy said.</div> <bR> <div> The Medical Association of South Africa, which represents conventional doctors, has expressed admiration for the work of traditional healers in rural areas and has sought detente with sangomas.</div> <bR> <div> ``We felt that, historically, the contempt of the medical profession for traditional healers was misplaced," said Dr. Edoo Barker, a Durban surgeon who is chairman of the association's science and education committee.</div> <bR> <div> Nevertheless, the medical association is uncomfortable about opening up insurance programs to the unregulated healers. Barker said many physicians have heard stories about high rates charged by traditional healers or have seen the ill effects of bad treatment by inyangas - for example, the occasional child whose internal organs were damaged by a caustic enema.</div> <bR> <div> In recent years, there have been several celebrated cases of ill-trained healers who used unsterile knives to circumcise young men in tribal rites of manhood, mutilating or infecting dozens of teenagers.</div> <bR> <div> ``I can see huge problems for the country's medical aid programs," Barker said. ``And if this country ever goes over to managed-care systems like they have in the States, I don't see a place for traditional healers in those organizations."</div> <bR> <div> While Zungu said he believed traditional healers should work with doctors, he also said orthodox medicine failed to address the root causes of sickness: stress in family relations or, as he said is most often the case, evil forces.</div> <bR> <div> During the course of a day at Zungu's Soweto clinic, a woman suffering from breast cancer came to his 8-by-10-foot examination room for herbal treatments. Zungu said a conventional doctor had suggested a mastectomy, but the woman wanted nothing to do with surgery.</div> <bR> <div> ``The black man thinks operations are a last resort," Zungu said. ``They don't believe they will survive the operation."</div> <bR> <div> Zungu makes some allowances for Western medicine. He keeps a box of rubber gloves among the dusty jars and cans that contain his herbal ingredients; he took a two-day course in AIDS awareness. To avoid spreading AIDS, patients scheduled to be ``immunized" against evil spirits - a process where herbal treatments are inserted into open incisions - must bring their own razors.</div> <bR> <div> Most patients who visited Zungu's office, which has no sign outside, complained about nonmedical problems. Several wanted potions to fortify them for school exams. Others wanted treatments to ease marital problems or family discord. One young couple wanted muti to place in their car to prevent it from being hijacked.</div> <bR> <div> A businessman wanted treatments to help his trucking company prosper. Zungu filled a vial with hippopotamus fat and dark minerals, and instructed the man to massage the ointment into his eyebrows to protect him from evil spells cast on behalf of his competitors.</div> <bR> <div> Sarah Mhlanga, 26, a regular patient, came to Zungu for a treatment to cleanse her system before she took an aptitude test for a new job.</div> <bR> <div> ``You feel fantastic afterwards, like a new person," Mhlanga said about the vomiting experience. ``Even these things you call pimples, when you take the medicine, you won't have them anymore."</div> <bR> <div> Zungu's rates vary considerably. Most returning patients paid nothing - Zungu said their initial payment covered them for several visits. Others paid as much as $15. In traditional culture, Zungu said, patients would pay only after they were cured. Nobody paid with vouchers.</div> <bR> <div> One of Zungu's last patients of the day - he saw more than 100 people - was a young woman brought in by her grandmother. The granddaughter had gone to an HIV clinic recently and tested negative. She was distraught. She trembled as she blew on the bones and scattered them on Zungu's floor.</div> <bR> <div> Zungu glanced at the objects and looked gravely to the grandmother.</div> <bR> <div> ``I see death will strike your family," he said in Zulu as he mixed several concoctions of traditional medicine. This news upset the young woman even more.</div> <bR> <div> ``You see!" said Zungu. ``This person here was being treated by conventional doctors. They treated her, discharged her, and said she was well. But if she was well, she would be happy and not in this state." </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>____________________________________________________________</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>  Subscribe to The Botanical Source free newsletter:<br><br> <form action="http://freeautobot.com/cgi-bin/autores/autores.cgi" target="_blank"> <input type=hidden name="do" value="add_lead_external"> <input type=hidden name="Username" value="botanical"> <input type=hidden name="Stop_Status" value="Active"> <input type=hidden name="Cycle_Number" value="0"> <input type=hidden name="Success_URL" value="http://www.thebotanicalsource.com/id310.htm"> <input type=hidden name="Failure_URL" value="http://www.thebotanicalsource.com/id309.htm"> <input type=hidden name="Notes" value="Added from opt-in form"> Email : <input type=text name="Email" value=""><br> <input type=submit value="Submit"> </form>   </B></div> <div> <B>[ Opens a new window. ]</B></div> <bR> <div> <B><U>Privacy Policy</U></B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B> :</B></FONT></div> <div> <B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700a000000000.png" HEIGHT="11" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">We do not publish or share your email address with anyone.</B></div> <div> <B>____________________________________________________________</B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Botanical Source"><U><B>Return to Herbal Products.</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Articles about African indigenous healin"><U><B>Return to Articles.</B></U></A></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>