The integration of traditional heales into the main-stream of our health care delivary services: A re-apraisal.

Abstract

This paper is essentially theoretical and attempts to re-appraise the issues involved in the call by the World Health Organization for the integration of traditional healers into the mainstram of health services. The focus is on the situation of Nigeria where traditional medicine exists alongside orthodox medicine, even though the former is yet to be given official recognition by the government. The urban nature of orthodox medicine encourages medical personnel and resources to cluster around urban centres, thus failing to serve the rural communities who account for over 80% of the population of Nigeria. Integrating the essentially rural traditional healers into the health system would seem a more effective and rational way of realizing the objective of health for all by the year 2000. The paper considers the possible ways of achieving integration and discusses the problems associated with it.