The Sunday Mail
Tendai Chara
Traditional healers are unhappy with the way they were allegedly treated at last week’s International Conference on Aids and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA).
Sekuru Friday Chisanyu, the Zimbabwe National Practitioners’ Association president, said traditional healers played an insignificant role during the conference.
“It is a known fact that more than 80 percent of people in Africa rely on traditional medicine. Despite the fact that we play such an important role, we were not fully represented and played minor roles during the conference,” Sekuru Chisanyu charged.
He said thousands of researchers and scientists attended the conference as compared to the “few” traditional healers that were invited.
More than 100 traditional healers drawn from across the continent attended the week-long conference.
“Traditional healers were not given the prominence they deserve. For instance, not a single traditional healer made a presentation at the main conference arena. Instead, we were relegated to group discussions and were never given the opportunity to exchange notes. To be honest, I did not interact with a single traditional healer during the conference,” said Sekuru Chisanyu.
Sekuru Chisanyu presented a paper entitled “The role of Traditional Medicine in the Treatment of Sexually Transmitted Infections”.
“Researches on traditional medicine and the processes of standardising traditional medicine is often led by people who are not in the practice.
“The researchers will go on and claim that they would have discovered new medicines. Some even go to the extent of patenting the medicine that we all know has been used by our ancestors,” Sekuru Chisanyu said.
