By Jude Etyang
Kampala
UGANDA's top medical professionals have opened up their arms to traditional healers to join the national health system.
The president of the Uganda Medical association (UMA), Dr. Kenya Mugisha, said there is no doubt traditional healers "are with us and will remain" to provide alternative health services.
He, however, cautioned that the healers' practice needs to be defined by establishing requirements for practice and minimum standards of service for them to follow.
"If you have to be possessed by spirits before your medicine can work, then you aren't in control of your senses. These are things we need to think about," Mugisha said during a meeting on the traditional and complimentary Medicine (TCM) policy at Hotel Equatoria in Kampala on Thursday.The meeting was organised by the health ministry to get an input from senior doctors, physicians and health specialists, including, Prof. N.K Sewankambo, the dean of Makerere University medical school and Dr. Edward Ddumba, the director of Mulago hospital.
The commissioner of planning in the health ministry, Dr. Francis Runumi, said the ministry ought to put the traditional healers in the mainstream health system.
He said the health ministry had hitherto been emphasising western medicine but would now promote traditional medicine, since it is part of the local culture.
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200604101226.html
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