COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE IN BOTSWANA: INSIGHTS FROM PRACTITIONERS AND CLIENTS

Abstract

Many people in Africa and the world at large continue to use their traditional health care systems along with the dominant western health care system. In response, the World Health Organization encourages and supports integration of the traditional and the western health care systems. The exercise reported here was an effort to acquaint graduate psychiatric nursing students to the place of traditional medicine in meeting the health care needs of clients. The paper is informed by literature review and dialogues with healers and users of the system.  It is evident that clients use traditional medicine use it along with western health system. However, there has been very little effort in Botswana to integrate the two systems. The authors recommend strengthening of the efforts to incorporate traditional healing in graduate nursing curricula, increased research on traditional medicine, and regulation of the traditional health care practice.