Health authorities and traditional healers in the fight against tuberculosis

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Health authorities and traditional healers in the fight against tuberculosis

1:35 CAT | 07 Dec 2017

Notícias / Deputy health minister João Leopoldo

Mozambique’s deputy health minister, João Leopoldo, has called on health professionals to cooperate with traditional doctors to stop patients with tuberculosis abandoning treatment.

Speaking at a meeting in Maputo on Tuesday, Leopoldo said that, because of their relationship of confidence with patients, especially in rural areas, traditional doctors could be important allies in the fight against treatment abandonment.

“Communication with these patients is often more effective through colleagues who practice traditional medicine,” Leopoldo said.

Traditional practitioners, he continued, had the advantage of combining the etiological treatment of the disease with a cultural one in their interaction with tuberculosis patients.

“Health authorities should look on practitioners of traditional medicine as partners,” he said. Cooperation between traditional practitioners and health professionals must be genuine in order to persuade patients to return to treatment.

Speaking to journalists, on the sidelines of the same meeting, the president of the Association of Traditional Doctors of Mozambique (Ametramo) backed training in the diagnosis of diseases that can only be treated with conventional medicine.

“We have to learn how to perceive that someone has a problem that is not within our competence,” Mathe said.

Source: Lusa