BY DR MASIMBA MAVAZA.
London. (News of The South) – It is with no doubt that Covid 19 substantially contributes to the burden of disease and health care provision in sub-Saharan Africa, where traditional healers play a major role in care, due to both their accessibility and acceptability. In rural, Zimbabwe people living with Illness often ping-pong between traditional healers and allopathic providers.
Traditional healers are practitioners of traditional African medicine, they fulfill different social and political roles in the community, including divination, healing physical, emotional and spiritual illnesses, directing birth or death rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, counteracting witchcraft, and narrating the history, cosmology, and myths of their tradition.
These healers are are highly revered and respected in a society where illness is thought to be caused by witchcraft, pollution (contact with impure objects or occurrences) or through neglect of the ancestors. It is estimated that there are as many as 200,000 indigenous traditional healers in Zimbabwe as compared to 5.000 Western-trained doctors.Traditional healers are consulted by approximately 80% of the Zimbabwean population, usually in conjunction with modern biomedical services.
For harmony between the living and the dead, vital for a trouble-free life, traditional healers believe that the ancestors must be shown respect through ritual and animal sacrifice There are medicines for everything from physical and mental illness, social disharmony and spiritual difficulties to potions for protection, love and luck. But in this time of Corona the traditional healers have buried their heads in the sand and are suffocating from the dust of their shame.
There are differences between practices: an inyanga or N’anga is concerned mainly with medicines made from plants and animals, while a Svikiro relies primarily on divination for healing purposes and might also be considered a type of fortune teller. In modern times, colonialism, urbanisation, and transculturation have blurred the distinction between the two and traditional healers tend to practice both arts.Traditional healers can alternate between these roles by diagnosing common illnesses, selling and dispensing remedies for medical complaints, and divining cause and providing solutions to spiritually or socially centred complaints.
Each culture has their own terminology for their traditional healers.
The Organisation of Traditional Healers in Zimbabwe is concerned that fraudsters may take advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak.
So the association has warned against traditional healers that claim to be able to cure coronavirus (COVID-19).
This follows reports that some traditional leaders are spreading false information about the virus.
The Organisation is concerned that fraudsters may take advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak by claiming to be able to heal the virus. This fear has actually discouraged the traditional healers to come out with proper cure for the virus.
While members of the public are to be vigilant the traditional healers must take the lead and come up with the cure.
In Zimbabwe, we have got a lot of charlatans and also that there are people that are going to claim to be healing coronavirus. The People who are supposed to encourage the use of our own home grown medication are the very ones who telling people not to go to the traditional healers because they are going to kill them. No one has a cure right now, but traditional healers, are used when there’s flu in the country. There are herbs that are used for the flu, but there is no further research to guarantee that those herbs that they have can heal this virus. The healers a gripped in a fear of the Corona to an extent that they do not want to fight the pandemic.
The chiefs and and all the traditional healers must come together and appoint a team which will do a research in the traditional medicines. The sad thing is that our own traditional healers are giving preference to the Western medication. They are a shame to the spirits they represent. They literally fail to push their agenda and wait to be guided by the Westerners. They are failing the nation by their failure to carry out their duty.
Even the spirits and the great ancestors are looking down in shame as their representatives are ashamed to proper-gate the use of their own medicine.
The lack of faith in their own medication makes their whole system a joke.
It has never been heard that the spirits withdraw into their cuckoon and expect some guidance from the total strangers.
The inferiority complex exhibited by the traditional healers is shameful and embarrassing. It is self defeating and depressing. It is totally flabbergasting.
The traditional healers were quick to call whoever dares to come out an imposter.
The sad thing is the traditional leaders view every traditional healer as an imposter.
Coming to another point, traditional healers, when treating other illness,look for symptoms, and if they feel that a patient needs to go to the clinic or hospital,they do refer them accordingly. So in this pandemic they are supposed to employ their skills and refer people if they fail. Likewise, now we call on traditional healers to look for the symptoms of the coronavirus and do the same thing; research on it and help the nation. President Mnangagwa should also call out to traditional healers to is their skills to find a cure.
Meanwhile, traditional healers must call on government to involve them in the dissemination of information about how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and involve them in the researches.
Africa must unite in fighting this virus. This means the virus must be fought with all treatment known and known.
All along traditional healers were able to treat and manage colds and flu, cough and related symptoms, why not expand their powers to Corona using our Afrikan Indigenous Medicines.
Traditional healers and leaders must work with government to ensure meaningful inclusion of African traditional medicine in the delivery of healthcare services. Covid-19 requires sober heads, so traditional leaders must be sober at least we hope.
This the time we need to act as a nation. Why do we always wait to be dictated by the West. We need to deal with our own problem.
The Masvikiros and N’anga and all the Makandiwa’s and Magaya’s must consult who ever they derive their powers from and tell us what is the problem. If their consultant has no power against Corona virus then it is the high time we must all turn to God.
Vazet2000@yahoo.co.uk
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