| dc.description.abstract | There are few fields in healthcare that elicit such controversy as traditional healthcare. The various negative and opposing reactions on the promulgation of the Traditional Health Practitioners Act (22 of 2007) (from here onwards "the Act") and the statutory recognition of the traditional health practitioner as full partners of South Africa's future healthcare establishment, are therefore not an unexpected surprise. South African literature on traditional healthcare offers various opinions, views, postulations, generalizations and myths about the wholesomeness, excellent healing abilities, distinctiveness and indispensability of the traditional healer in the health system. Claims include statements such as that 80 per cent of all South Africans regularly consult traditional healers before consulting modern medicine; that there are 200 000 traditional healers in practice with a further 500 000 traditional healers working outside the formal biomedical system; that traditional healers are an important national health resource; that there is at present a dramatic evolution in traditional medicine and that the holistic treatment approach of the traditional healer is favoured above the Western healthcare approach. Literature alleges that the White governments of South Africa discriminated against indigenous healthcare and cultures and therefore limited their growth; that apartheid and its White supremacy led to the stunted development of traditional healing in South Africa. Other prominent postulations are that traditional healthcare is an essential and irreplaceable component of HIV/Aids (Human immunodeficiency virus/Acquired immune deficiency syndrome) care and physical and mental health, and that the traditional healer is therefore entitled to statutory recognition as an independent medical or health practitioner. ¹⁻¹⁷ An in-depth review of governmental and popular literature on South African traditional healing shows a very one-sided, superficial and unscientific research approach and reporting. It reflects an approach that is most often based on citing old and not always trustworthy information. Explicit descriptions and analyses based on sound and in-depth research of historical events and facts, reliable and well-reported statistics and other supportive evidence to enlighten the role of the traditional healer, are absent from most literature. ¹⁻¹⁷ | |
