Traditional medical practitioners need to be recruited to fight Aids in Africa, which accounts for 60% of the world’s cases, a senior United Nations official said on Thursday.
”Countries should embrace traditional health practitioners as partners in the health care system,” Luis Gomes Sambo, the UN World Health Organisation’s (WHO) regional director for Africa, said in a statement.
He said studies in some countries showed ”improved health delivery” and ”earlier referrals to bio-medical facilities by traditional health practitioners”, leading to increased awareness about HIV/Aids.
”Despite these positive aspects, in many countries, HIV/Aids-prevention efforts have been fragmented and made unfocused and redundant due to the failure of key stakeholders to work with each other.”
”All practitioners need to better appreciate the strength of both disciplines,” he said, adding that if traditional doctors were brought in, it could help ”reach large numbers of people who otherwise would have very little access to HIV/Aids prevention and services.”
”We need, therefore, to take steps to overcome these challenges if traditional medicine is to systematically contribute to the prevention of HIV/Aids,” he said.
In the 25th year since the naming of the HIV virus, the world’s poorest continent has taken some strides in fighting the pandemic, but experts say that a shortage of funds and poor health systems and policies mean that far more needs to be done.
According to the latest UNAids report, 24,5-million people were living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of last year, amounting 64% of the world’s total.
The UN has clashed with continental giant South Africa, which with 5,5-million infections has one of the world’s heaviest caseloads, over its Aids policies, with matters coming to a head at the recent Aids conference in Toronto.
The UN’s top envoy for Aids in Africa, Stephen Lewis, denounced what he called ”theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state”.
South African Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has come under fire at home and abroad for mooting diet of beetroot, garlic and lemons to fight HIV, an approach scientists say is worthless. — Sapa-AFP