Browsing by Subject "Traditional health practitioners"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Myths, masks and stark realities: traditional African healers, HIV/AIDS narratives and patterns of HIV/AIDS avoidance.
    (2008) Wreford, Joanne
    Based on field evidence from anthropological research with Traditional Health Practitioners in the Western Cape Province, this paper presents narratives that demonstrate the use of myth and camouflage in popular responses to HIV/AIDS, as experienced by Traditional Health Practitioners. The narratives are analysed from the perspective of the traditional healers in order to interrogate biomedical assumptions that traditional health practitioners are largely to blame for encouraging denial and non-disclosure, or wilfully undermining western medical efforts to deal with the epidemic. The paper explains the effects of popular explanations of HIV/AIDS on traditional health practitioners, and suggests that they do not simply endorse these accounts, but are prepared to be sceptical and to challenge them when they arise.
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    Open Access
    The pragmatics of knowledge transfer: an HIV/AIDS intervention with traditional health practitioners in South Africa
    (2009) Wreford, Joanne
    The persistence ofthe binary of scientific and indigenous or traditional medicine in contemporary South Africa is particularly unhelpful in the context of HIV/AIDS and encourages biomedical disengagement from a potentially helpful cohort of health professionals recognised within their communities. This article offers and discusses ethnographic evidence from Project HOPE, an HIV/AIDS intervention involving African traditional health practitioners (isiXhosa: amagqirha) in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The article suggests several possibilities of advantage to the efficacy of western medical interventions in this sort of collaborative approach. Testimony from participants from both paradigms is offered to support this assertion. The article includes a contextual examination of the debate about HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa which explores the effects of confused interpretations of 'traditional' and scientific medicine in this regard.
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    Shaming and blaming: Medical myths, traditional health practitioners and HIV/AIDS in South Africa.
    (2008) Wreford, Joanne
    This paper examines some often repeated 'medical myths' about Traditional Health Practitioners (THPs) in South Africa, in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Narratives have served many purposes in the pandemic: the stories included here provide specific commentary, often implicitly derogatory or critical, on the role of THPs. The anecdotes can be seen to reflect the uneasy interaction generally prevailing between the traditional and biomedical paradigms in South Africa. The paper first examines some of the reasons for the biomedical presumptions that underlie these narratives. It argues that in attributing blame, the stories exert an unhelpful effect and undermine confidence in the possibility of collaborative medical efforts against HIV and AIDS. In contrast, the paper utilises field evidence to suggest that, given mutual respect, THPs can be successfully drawn into biomedical prevention and treatment interventions, and thereby improve their efficacy.