African Traditional Therapeutics: Disease Causation, Agency, and Efficacy

  • Mario J Azevedo
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the African Histories and Modernities book series (AHAM)

Abstract

This chapter purports not only to chronicle the existence of centuries-old health care practices that have served the African people, but also to assess their impact, importance, and future. The African continent is under immense pressure from Western-trained physicians, governments, and religious organizations which, while continuing to pay lip service to the World Health Organization (WHO)’s urgent call for African traditional therapeutics incorporation into the national therapeutic systems, are intent on playing down the so-called “unscientific” and unproven medical practices and eventually eliminating them altogether. The move towards accomplishing this goal has been slow because traditional health care practices are still extremely popular in Africa. Authorities fear the citizens’ angry reaction if they were to eliminate them through a national fiat. Any open radical proscription of the sanctioned health care traditions could, in fact, result in the call for the removal of any politician suggesting that these culturally based but honored traditions be discontinued.

Keywords

Traditional Medicine Traditional Healer African Society Disease Causation Africanist Historian 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Mario J Azevedo
    • 1
  1. 1.Jackson State UniversityJacksonUSA

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