Helping each other to fight HIV/AIDS

For Makhosi Ngema, a traditional healer from Ntuzuma, north of Durban, helping people living with HIV/AIDS has never been easy and has become a daily struggle.

Ngema said for years she has been struggling to educate people and herself about the disease, and while she might see many patients, helping them at times was very difficult, especially without the necessary resources.

But, thanks to a partnership between the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, the eThekwini Municipality, the Department of Health and KZN Traditional Health Practitioners, traditional healers would now be able to do more than they had done in the fight against the disease.

One hundred and seventy traditional healers graduated yesterday from the University of KwaZulu-Natal after completing a course on HIV/AIDS that will also see them working alongside healthcare workers and helping each other fight the disease, promoting HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.

The $700 000 (R4,9 million) President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief-funded project will see more than 400 traditional healers graduate by the end of this year. Ngema said: "Working the way we have been has been hard because there are so many things that we do not know. During this course I learnt so much about the disease and how traditional medicine can help in the fight against a disease that is killing so many of our people."

Because of the programme, there will be a demographic database of participating traditional health practitioners, including their locations, contact information, practice details, referral networks and educational and training background. The programme also includes advanced HIV/AIDS awareness training, integrating the latest scientific information with innovative teaching methods and home-based care medical kits.

Prof Willem Sturm of the University of KZN, said it was high time that modern medicine started noticing traditional medicine as a contributor to the health care system.

He said: "For too long the medical fraternity has looked down at traditional healers and has not seen the role that they can play. They tend to forget that some of the methods we use, we learnt from traditional healers and there is no reason why we can't work together."