Browsing by Subject "Biomedical practitioners"

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    Negotiating healing: The politics of professionalisation amongst traditional healers in Kwazulu-Natal
    (2006) Devenish, Annie
    Traditional healing in South Africa is undergoing a process of change. Recognition of the role of traditional healers in health care, especially in the face of the HIV and AIDS pandemic, has led to government calls for professionalisation amongst this group. Traditional healers themselves have been increasingly experiencing a need to professionalise in order to gain more equal treatment in the public health sector and to secure access to state resources and support. In response to these developments, the government passed the Traditional Health Practitioners Act in 2004, which sets the parameters for official recognition of healers under the state. This paper focuses on the dynamics and politics amongst traditional health practitioners as they undergo this process of professionalisation, focusing on the KwaZulu-Natal Traditional Healers Council, the official body responsible for representing healers in the Province. It explores and analyses several key tensions amongst healers within and beyond the Council, showing how these tensions reveal particular power struggles over authority, as well as conflicting perspectives on the control and use of indigenous knowledge and the parameters of ‘authentic’ and ‘appropriate’ healing practice. The paper also looks at how the KwaZuluNatal Council has attempted to mediate these tensions, emphasising that healers will have to find ways to resolve such conflicts in order for them to be able to come together and work on a common vision of professionalism.
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    'We can help!' - A literature review of current practice involving traditional African healers in biomedical HIV/AIDS interventions in South Africa
    (2005) Wreford, Jo
    This review describes the available research literature involved with efforts at collaboration between Traditional African Healers (TAHs) and biomedical practitioners in HIV/AIDS interventions in Southern Africa. The paper draws on academic texts including published and unpublished research papers, books and reports, and press comments on the subject. The focus is on Southern African literature, but selected texts from elsewhere on the continent are also included. The paper interrogates, in particular, the roles assigned to more spiritually inspired practitioners, such as sangoma, in these interventions. The paper considers the effects on relationships between biomedicine and the traditional health sector and explores some of the obstacles in the way of successful future collaborations. The analysis addresses the following questions: What are the roles assigned to sangoma and other traditional health practitioners in biomedically constructed HIV/AIDS interventions to date? What has been the experience of sangoma and traditional health practitioners of these interventions, and how have biomedical professionals involved in these interventions responded to the traditional health practitioners? What factors contribute to negative responses where these occur, and how might these be addressed? Could the roles of sangoma and traditional health practitioners be enhanced to improve the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS interventions?