Types Of Practitioners And Practices,disease Concept And Aetiology Flashcards
What are the four main groups of traditional practitioners
- Traditional Birth Attendants • Herbalists
- Faith Healers
- Spiritualists:
- Diviners & Traditional herbalists
Who is a TBA Classicaly what group of people Are TBAs State four roles of TBAs What is the practitioner patient relationship with respect to TBAs(formal or informal) How are TBAs trained?
This group are considered as traditional midwives.
• Embedded in the community, hence have detailed knowledge of the
community members or clients.
• Classically middle-aged to old women.
- Roles:
- Uniquely skilled in pregnancy/prenatal issues.
- Assist pregnant women with deliveries.
- Also involved in child care and the health of the mother post-delivery. • Involved in sex education & contraceptive counselling
TBA’s play a supportive role
• Practitioner-patient relationship is informal.
• Care is continuous and during deliveries the practitioners knows her
client very well.
• Training:
• Apprenticeship
• Young female understudies a more experienced one by careful observation.
• During apprenticeship, the trainee learns in an informal environment and may
even help with household chores.
• TBA’s are very essential to maternal care.
Which group of traditional medicine practitioners are the largest group ?
Which group’s approach and methods of treatment may be similar to modern mediicne and the afhere strictly to traditional medicine principles?
State the subspecialties of herbalists and explain ehat they do
What are the roles of herbalists?
How are they trained?
• These are the largest set of traditional medicine practitioners.
• Approach and methods of treatment may be similar to modern
medicine.
• They adhere to strictly traditional medical principles.
- Subspecialities:
- Bone setters
- Wazams: Undertake male & female circumcision
- “Purist” Herbalists(pure herbalists)
- Neotraditional healers*(modern form of herbalists or traditional healers)
- Roles:
- Management of all ailments based on the subspeciality. • Generally classified as the doctor for the community.
- Training:
- Informal
- Apprenticeship
Faith healers have their roots where?
State five characterisitcs of faith healers
What three things are at the core if healing sessions
Mallams fall under faith healers true or false?
What are the roles of faith healers and how are they trained?
- These group of healers have their roots in Christianity.
- Characteristically they are:
- Leaders of some sort of revival and have a sect.
- Leaders of an African-based syncretic church.
- Aside their church services they hold a lot of healing sessions.
- They may also have prayer camps & allied facilities for patients.
- They may also have regular healthcare facilities.
- The bible, holy water and prayer is at the core of healing sessions.
- Practitioners may be of both sexes.
- Mallams although not very popular in our setting fall under this category
- Roles:
- Spiritual leaders and guides
- Handling of social, psychological and psychosomatic issues.
- Training:
- Divine calling
- Pseudo-apprenticeship
Who are almost synonymous to the practice of traditional medicine
Spiritualists employ which means for disease diagnosis
Name two things spiritualists claim and state how they establish cause and tratment for ailments
How is diagnosis done ?
After diagnosis ehat happens and whats the purpose of the step that happens after diagnosis
What are performed to increase the healing power of treatments?
Who are the true spiritualists?
What are the roles of spiritualists
• Spiritualists are almost synonymous to the practice of traditional medicine.
• Spiritualists employ possession, divination and other ritual means for disease diagnosis.
• Claim to be intermediaries between the physical and spiritual agents.
• They claim to have healing powers and their diagnostic abilities come
from the supernatural.
• Act in stead for their patients to establish the cause & treatment for ailments through the process of divination.
• Diagnosis is by divination
• After divination, an interview session is undertaken in order to
confirm diagnosis.(like history and physical exam)
• Interviews are to understand the social and psychological reasons for the disease.
• Rituals are performed to augment the healing power of treatments.
• True spiritualists are the priest/priestesses.
- Roles:
- Spiritual guides for believers and the community.
- Management of ailments
Scope of Practices
• Traditional medicine and their medical practices are not tailored to treat only pathological diseases.
True or false
Treament covers what?
Name some practitioners that are more or less specialists
Name some practitioners who overlap in their framework of practice?
- Treatment covers all physical, social and psychological issues of patients.
- Some practitioners are more or less specialists: Wanzam, Traditional Birth Attendant.
- Some overlap in their framework of practice: Mallam, Spiritualist, Herbalist.
What is health and well being
What us disease?
How do afrucans understand disease and health?
When all organs and tissues, as well as mental faculties function in accordance with the design by which the organisms of the species in question maintain and renew their life.
• Disease is defined as that which impairs the normal function of the body organs.
• Definitions are very different from what constitutes the African notion of health and disease.
• The Africans understanding of disease and health is based on our understanding of the world around us.
What is the african view of reality
• The African view of reality is a system of structural relationship between man and nature, and man and the spirit world.
Man has a relationship with nature,his community and his religion or spirituality
• African doctrines or theories on reality and the Universe is made up of things like God, gods, life, life after death, reincarnation, spirit, society, man, ancestors, heaven, hell, things, institutions, beliefs, conceptions, practices.
• To Africans, the whole multiplicity of things which comprise the universe are mystically one and therefore constitute only one thing, one reality; everything is a part of the other that makes up reality, the total cosmos or universe.
Good health for africans consist of ehat?
What us this view founded on?
What is the view of health amongst Africans with respect to the living and their ancestors
- The traditional African sees health as not just proper functioning of bodily organs.
- Good health for the African consists of mental, physical, spiritual, emotional stability of oneself, family members, and community.
- This view is founded on the African unitary view of reality and therefore good health for the African is not a subjective affair.
- Health amongst Africans is not based merely on how it affects the living, because it is of paramount importance that the ancestors stay healthy so that they can protect the living.
- e.g. placing parts of our meals in certain corners of their homes, designated as ancestral shrines.
What do traditionalists view about God and ancestral spirits?
Religion is fundamental
• African traditionalists believe that there is only one Supreme God.
• In spite of their view about God, they also believe in ancestral spirits, with the belief that they are all intertwined and are in constant relationship with living beings.
• These spirits demand worship and are said to possess supernatural powers with which they punish or reward their worshippers.
• In most African traditional communities there is no place for atheism.
• However, God does his work through ancestral spirits and diviners. This implies that God is the healer but works through mediums such as spirits, herbs and deities with the assistance of diviners or traditional healers.
What does African metaphysics depict
Metaphysical World
• It is strongly believed that the ancestors need to be fed and offered drinks, usually traditional drinks such as local gin and palm wine, so that they will perform their ancestral functions, which are principally for the welfare of the living.
• Life in Africa is cyclical in that it is believed that the ancestors of today could reincarnate as the living of tomorrow.
• The ancestors are believed to possess many powers. They transcend humanity and yet interact with humanity.
• This process is best understood within the framework of African metaphysics, which depicts everything and everyone as forces emitting life and energy, and this force applies to ancestors who play a significant part in human existence
What are yhe four fundamental causes of disease
Name three illnesses that African communities believe can be transmitted through witchcraft and unforseen forces
Fundamental causes of disease
• disease is often caused by attacks from evil or bad spirits.
• The belief that when the ancestors are not treated well, they could punish people with disease
• Spell-casting and witchcraft are also other ways one could become sick.
• The breaking of community taboos
• Generally, traditional African communities are of the view that certain illnesses which defy scientific treatment can be transmitted through witchcraft and unforeseen forces;
• these include barrenness, infertility,
• attacks by dangerous animals, snake bites by dangerous
• snakes, persistent headaches and repeated miscarriages
What if the function of moral behavior and whT can disloyal behaviour cost you?
- In some Ghanaian communities, example in the Akan communities, one could become sick through invocation of curses in the name of the river deity, Antoa, upon an unknown offender.
- Sickness may be the result of breaking of certain taboos, e.g. among the Hausa’s mothers with twins are obliged to beg for arms otherwise the children will never be healthy.
- Disobeying these taboos could lead to severe illness to the person(s) or community involved.
- Moral behaviour maintains and enhances one’s life force, but disobedience and disloyal behaviour towards tradition passed on by the ancestors will weaken the life force. This can, therefore, lead to punishment from the ancestors or spirits in the form of disease and misfortune.
How are diseases diagnosed
What us divination?
And which step is done first in most cases
• Diagnosis is a 2-fold event:
• The organic or physical cause of the sickness has to be established by careful
examination and questioning by the practitioner.
• Any spiritual or mystical cause of the disease is also identified.
• Some of the methods used include:
• Consulting the spirit world (divination) to understand the spiritual cause of a
disease.
• Divinations has been defined as technology/methods that is used to deliberately initiate a process of accessing and collecting information, through the use of randomly arranged symbols and then, using the brain’s capacity for analogical thinking, making associations that are ordinarily inaccessible (Croucamp, 2013).
• In most cases divination is the first step.
How do traditional healers identify vioations with regards to diagnosing the disease?
The divining bone are sometimes not just bones but may sometimes include what othe rmaterials?
Animal bones from which animals form large majority of objects?
What do the bones represent?
- Identify violations using cowry shells, throwing bones on strips of leather or flat pieces of wood.
- The divining bones are sometimes not just bones but may sometimes include shells, money, seeds and dices.
- Animal bones from lions, hyenas, ant-eaters, baboons, crocodiles, wild pigs, goats, antelopes and others form the large majority of the objects.
- There are bones for all psycho-socio-spiritual polarities.
- The bones represent all of the forces that affect any human being anywhere, whatever their culture.
