Political-economic structures—Approaches to traditional and modern medical systems

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the WHO-UNICEF suggestion to train indigenous healers to be first-line deliverers of medical care. Rather than evaluate this proposal directly, the paper concentrates instead on the factors currently influencing the relationship between indigenous and Western medicine. A framework, viewing the potential health impact of the use of indigenous healers, is constructed through the comparative method [6]. Data reviewed consists of monographs, journal articles, dissertations. etc., and considers historical, cultural, and political theories of the status of native medicine. The paper concludes that the politics of health care is a greater impediment to the provision of “health care for all” in some types of political economic systems than in others. Thus events in the health care system as seen as influenced by the larger socio-political system.