I shall deal with a limited number of aspects of the traditional healer in Tanzania. A more expanded treatment will be presented in a larger study on health policy and development in Tanzania since 1930. Traditional medicine has been discussed by anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers in ever increasing numbers in this country, probably because research in their fields brought them into close contact with the rural population. Historians and political scientists have been slow in examining the role of the native doctor in the colonial period and since 1961. This does not mean that material on the existence and activities of the African practitioner of medicine was not available. It was the medical doctor who became aware of the existence of African medicine when he found that his treatment was not accepted or was supplemented by visits to the African medicine man.

During the last several years “primary care” has come to the fore as the “new” priority in health care. In September, 1978 the World Health Organization and UNICEF jointly sponsored the first International Conference on Primary Health Care. The following general principles were put forward in 1975 by the 28th World Health Assembly as the basis of successful primary care efforts.

1. 1. Primary health care should be shaped around the life patterns of the population it should serve and should meet the needs of the community.

2. 2. Primary health care should be an integral part of the national health system and other echelons of services should be designed in support of the needs of the peripheral level, especially as this pertains to technical supply, supervisory, and referral support.

Few would dispute the claim that traditional medical practitioners provide most of the health care in Africa today. The reasons for this are several and include the availability and accessibility of traditional practitioners to the mass of people and faith in their skills. In recent years much discussion has centered on the issue of integrating traditional practitioners into the modern health care delivery system (Good, 1977). Strong arguments have been mustered on either side of this question, and they are often presented with heated emotion. The degree and level of integration is also hotly disputed, and shades of opinion range from advocating dialogue between the two systems to proposing that traditional practitioners be “legitimized” and integrated into the modern health care delivery system. Most opinions on this broad subject area have been publicly voiced or written by those whose culture reference is western. We know very little about how traditional practitioners feel about the matter.

Over the years, studies of materials about Africa, especially in the fields of religion, history, anthropology, culture, and sociology, have contributed to the reconstruction of the predominant modes of thought and reason that led to the rise of the people’s belief systems, values, and religious doctrines. Though limited in many ways and still in the most rudimentary stage, the study of African religion has helped in some ways in the understanding of the basis of thought and action which determine African cognitions and total experience, in other words, African consciousness of his universe, feeling, and understanding of the state of being. It is important that interest in the study of African religion should be sustained, for one is still confronted today–often by those who should know–with derisively cynical questions such as: Is there an African religion? What in fact is it if there is one? Isn’t it really the worship of ancestors? Is not African healing merely the practice of magic and mumbo-jumbo?

The philosophy of African medical practice is rooted in the African world view. Those locating the cause and cure of sickness in traditional practice ask about the ultimate who, rather than what. The answers given are in terms of the cosmological beliefs of the people. I shall deal with the philosophical issues in African medicine with particular reference to causes and cures of sickness in the traditional practice, the human person in this practice, the Christian, the colonial, and modern impact on this view, and a look towards the future. In doing this, I shall show that African traditional medical practice has important contributions to make in technologically oriented medicine.

This paper addresses itself to the history of pluralistic medical systems in Ghana. Case studies of the systems (traditional and modern-scientific) as evolving traditions with unique premises and techniques will be discussed. Modes of medical institutionalization, recruitment, training, and allocation of resources will be explained. Finally, this paper will attempt to explain the nature of the interrelationship between the two medical orientations in terms of their consequences in health care. The essay will focus on how medical systems are used by consumers and how medical systems are created, maintained, and reformed by professional authorities.

During the period of the slave trade (1650-1830), people were brought from the whole West Coast of Africa to Suriname. The majority had a Fante-Akan (Ghana), Ewe-Fon (Togo and Benin), or a western Bantu (Congo, Zaire and Angola) background, while the Mandingo (Senegal, Sierra Leone and Liberia) formed a minor fraction (Wooding 1972: ch. II). In the course of time they amalgamated into the Afrosurinamese population group, which is subdivided into two main groups: the coastal Creoles and the inland Bushnegroes.