Debate Rages Over Medical Licensing of Traditional Healers

August 18, 2004

Source: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/international/africa/18letter.html

On August 18, 2004 The New York Times reported, "South Africa is having a serious debate over how to license its doctors. Legislators are pondering minimum requirements for medical practice, rules of professional ethics and standards for quality of care. A government research council is conducting double-blind, placebo-controlled tests on potential new prescription drugs. Insurance companies are considering new claims-reimbursement guidelines. It is the very model of a modern regulatory process, with one exception: these doctors are sangomas - diviners, who cure with combinations of herbal potions, readings of scattered bones and second opinions from long-dead ancestors. Disbelievers long pinned them with the offensive label 'witch doctors.' Today's politically correct term is 'traditional healers.' By any name, they pose an exquisitely difficult question: How does this, Africa's most Westernized nation, accredit as legally recognized physicians a group whose members largely confound empirical Western standards? It is a sterling example of the tightrope South Africans walk every day: melding modern and ancient; Western and African; black and white and mixed-race culture, while still accommodating the distinctive virtues of each. Many westernized South Africans, though by no means all, may scoff at sangomas and other traditional healers as frauds. But this nation has about 23,000 Western-style physicians - and perhaps 14 times as many healers of various types. By some reckonings, more than 8 in 10 South Africans turn to traditional healers for help with both medical and personal problems, even if they also see a Western-educated doctor."