TRADITIONAL  HEALING  STRUCTURES  FACE  AN  INCREASING FLOW  OF  INFORMATION

 

by Hugo Van Damme of NGOMA, Swaziland

·     Traditional Healers (TH) in Africa, and elsewhere, have a problem obtaining and processing information they need in order to be able to communicate equitable with other actors in areas relevant to TH’s operations.

·     TH then face the problem of how to understand and filter the enormous offer of information.

·     ‘others’ often select the information that eventually reaches the TH and their structures, a selective process of which I am also part and recognize the dangers.

·      Governments, ngo’s, researchers and their institutions, all involved in traditional healing related actions bear the responsibility to educate and inform the TH and their structures so that they are not left to their own resources and can subsequently be easily dominated, abused and directed by the ‘others’.

INFORMATION  MANAGEMENT  FOR  TH

I want to make a strong case for government funded teams to be set up which specifically deal with helping TH and their structures cope with the information flow, making them less depended on people like me to select and digest information for them.

USING  THE  ELECTRONIC  MEDIA

The Henry Kaiser funded South African NGO Healthlink does good work assisting Western health structures in rural South Africa to obtain information by e-mail. Healthlink SA has not yet managed to extend that support to the TH and their structures and I hope they will do just that in the near future.
IPR, TRR, WHAT IS THE POINT?

The problem:  OVERHEAD 4, extracts of a newspaper article as published by the Natal Witness in KZN on 20 March 1998. It deals with Basmati rice, a traditional Indian product being patented by a USA company to elbow out competition on the UK markets.

The same patenting restrictions could happen to traditional medicine. Some industries are of the view that traditional local communities should just join and patent their own heritage instead of choosing to stay out of the global free market. Again relevant information has to be obtained and processed. Collaboration between all actors and Western medicine in particular is very much necessary to resolve the issue.

Overheads 2&3 reflect info published on the WWW by the USA patenting office.

The safeguarding of the African biological, intellectual and cultural heritage needs a concept like IPR. Darrel Posey replaces IPR by traditional Resource Rights. Concept has to be agreed on now.

OVERHEAD 6, THE MISSING DIALOG, which has extracts of an interview done by J.S. James with Kaiya Montaocean where a pessimistic view is given of Western (medical) structures towards TH.

CONCLUSION

Information obtaining and processing has to be facilitated by government sponsored bodies.

Governments and lawmakers must understand that TH will just ignore new laws if they are being made without ‘real’ consultation! TH will simply continue to practice like before if they don’t feel connected to the new laws.

Biodiversity will not be served well by anything less than full equity for TH and their structures.

TH have to be able to make a very informed decision on whether they want to be integrated into another health system or collaborate.

                                INTRODUCTION

NAME:                    HUGO  VAN  DAMME

BASED:                   SWAZILAND, COVERING SOUTHERN AFRICA

ROLE IN TRADITIONAL HEALING SECTOR:

                                MEMBER OF BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THO

                                COORDINATOR  OF  NGOMA

FUNCTIONS OF NGOMA:

                                COLLECT, WORK WITH INFORMATION 

                                WHICH 

                                CONCERNS TH

BY:  MONITORING  MEDIA

        NETWORKING

        CONSULTING WITH TH AND RELVANT INDIVIDUALS

                             AND ORGANIZATIONS

        HELPING TO DEVELOP ADEQUATE RESPONSES

        OF TH SECTOR TO INFO AND RELEVANT ACTIONS

         PARTICIPATING IN RELEVANT DIALOG

         CRITICAL REVIEW OF RESEARCH, PUBLICATIONS