Culture and the feasibility of a partnership between westernized medical practitioners and traditional healers

Abstract

Possibilities for co-operation in cancer prevention, detection and treatment, between traditional medicine and modern Western medicine in South Africa were investigated. Interviews were conducted with traditional healers to establish their views regarding health culture, health care pluralism, professionalization and co-operation with Western medical doctors. Factors found to influence possible co-operation include differences in health cultures, mutual distrust and suspicion, differences in perceptions of disease causation, traditional healers' reluctance to expose their cultural heritage and to betray the trust of their ancestors, communication differences such as traditional healers' inability to translate their cultural heritage into words, and the consequences that professionalization might have for them. While co-operation between traditional and Western medicine has not been fully established, patients are still faced with two separate health care perspectives and will continue seeking health care from either or both as they see fit. Limited co-operation already exists between the two systems, but before any co-operation on a large scale can be attempted a mutual understanding of the two cultures needs to be established.