The dilemma of traditional healing with special reference to Nigeria

The healing process represents an interaction between patient, therapist, and the socio-cultural environment. This interaction characterizes both traditional and cosmopolitan medicine. The shortage of professional health care staff in rural areas recommends to some that these parallel medical systems be integrated. However, those who most strongly advocate such integration are foreigners, not familiar enough with the problems such policy would generate. In Nigeria, and elsewhere, it is difficult to plan such an integrated system before knowing how many indigenous curers are in practice, what kinds of medical problems they address, and with which kinds of problems they have most success. Integration also poses some serious dilemmas. For instance, although in Nigeria herbalists find dramatic success with some of their potent medicines, they lack an adequate knowledge of the effects these potions may have on the patient. Another dilemma is raised by the necessity to have written records of patients, their complaints, and the effects of treatment: but illiterate healers will be unable to maintain such files. These and other administrative dilemmas must be foreseen. Finally, the success of traditional healers in treating mentally ill patients rests on the fact that their techniques are clearly related to the relevant cultural premises of the patient. However, if in the course of incorporating them into the official health system it is considered to be necessary to educate them in concepts of germs and infection, it is probable that these new. intrusive concepts of etiology will prove alien and incompatible with their traditional understandings. Moreover, such training would fracture the shared cognitive bond between healers and those who are their patients. © 1992.