Charlene Smith
Traditional leaders and healers are moving rapidly to amend custom and tradition, and to use herbal remedies in some of the most effective battles against the ravages of Aids.
The Medical Research Council (MRC)recently opened a research centre at Delft in Cape Town where traditional healers purvey their craft, and where they can bring remedies for testing.
Makosazana Memela practises as a sangoma with her husband in Baloyi, a village near Port Shepstone. She will not divulge her remedies, except for iboza the largish, furry leaf of a low-growing shrub. She dries a leaf, grinds it, brews it and then applies the infusion to thrush and sores in the throat.
She says (and MRC research supports this) that sangomas provide an important source of psychological support. “Some people come after they have lost hope. They say, I am HIV-positive, I am going to die; and I say, you will die when God allows it. I tell them if they eat carefully they can live for long.”
Sibongile Pefile, who heads the MRC’s traditional medicine unit, says they sign confidentiality agreements with healers to ensure that remedies remain affordable to the poor and are not patented by multinational pharmaceutical companies.
The possibilities are extensive. For example, across Africa the African potato and the cancer bush are boiled and drunk to boost the immune system. The plump leaves of the sour fig are used as a remedy against oral and genital thrush. And the ground shell of a snail, if rubbed on sores heals them, traditional healers say.
Harnessing the expertise of traditional healers, and educating them, is also important in removing denial and myth around HIV.
Mark Colvin of the MRC in Durban works with traditional healers as effective purveyors of directly observed therapy (DOT) to increase the regularity with which tuberculosis patients take medicine.
A study by Colvin and his research team saw two and a half times more patients under the care of traditional healers complete their medication, compared to those monitored by clinics or health workers. Four times more patients not monitored by traditional healers died. These results are important because as the researchers note: “The TB epidemic is being driven by the HIV epidemic, with 28% of TB patients in 1993 being co-infected with HIV, 59% in 1995 and 65% in 1997.”
Patients prefer traditional healers, according to Colvin et al, because they have “a caring attitude. Our concern that [traditional healers] may have used their role as a DOT supervisor to coerce TB patients into purchasing traditional remedies or services was not realised. Only one patient was given a herbal treatment and this was provided free.”
Xhosa traditional leader Thanisizwe Samcela says more traditional leaders have to become active in Aids awareness campaigns. And they have to lead by example. “Polygamy has become suicide. Traditional leaders are supposed to be role models for people; if they are faithful to their partners, and assume an active role in the rural areas to educate people about health, the young generation has something to learn from them.”