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More about Spirited Women
Traditional Birth Attendants
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| Providing Gentle Birth Support for Families Choosing to Birth at Home |
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| The following has been excerpted from the World Health Organization home page http://who.org. Please also see the North American Guild of Traditional Midwives web site http://maxpages.com/igtm for more information about midwifery in North America. TRADITIONAL MEDICINE The term "traditional medicine" refers to ways of protecting and restoring health that existed before the arrival of modern medicine. As the term implies, these approaches to health belong to the traditions of each country, and have been handed down from generation to generation. Traditional systems in general have had to meet the needs of the local communities for many centuries. China and India, for example, have developed very sophisticated systems such as acupuncture and ayurvedic medicine. In practice, the term "traditional medicine" refers to the following components: acupuncture, traditional birth attendants, mental healers and herbal medicine. Over the years, the World Health Assembly has adopted a number of resolutions drawing attention to the fact that most of the populations in various developing countries around the world depends on traditional medicine for primary health care, that the work force represented by practitioners of traditional medicine is a potentially important resource for the delivery of health care and that medicinal plants are of great importance to the health of individuals and communities. A genuine interest in various traditional practices now exists among practitioners of modern medicine and growing numbers of practitioners of traditional, indigenous or alternative systems are beginning to accept and use some of the modern technology. This will help foster teamwork among all categories of health workers within the framework of primary health care. The reasons for the inclusion of traditional healers in primary health care are manifold: the healers know the sociocultural background of the people; they are highly respected and experienced in their work; economic considerations; the distances to be covered in some countries; the strength of traditional beliefs; the shortage of health professionals, particularly in rural areas, to name just a few. A large proportion of the population in a number of developing countries still relies on traditional practitioners, including traditional birth attendants, herbalists and bone-setters and on local medicinal plants to satisfy their primary health care needs. WHO estimates that traditional birth attendants assist in up to 95% of all rural births and 70% of urban births in developing countries. |
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