ABSTRACT

The physical and social infrastructures of Mozambique at the time of independence were as weak as any African nation that had gained independence in the 1960s or even in the 1950s. Interviewers were drawn from the Manica Provincial Health Department, Radio Mozambique, and the Department of Traditional Medicine, with assisting and supervising. Diarrhea and Sexually tranmitted diseases (STDs)/Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome were initial focus areas because both were and are high-priority health concerns for government and donors. Healers appear confident in the efficacy of their treatments for STDs. They seem to advise their STD clients to use traditional medicines and to avoid hospital medicines—or injections specifically. There are other parallels with biomedicine such as recognition that STDs can infect newborn infants and those STD symptoms can become latent. Manica healers also recognize that untreated STDs, especially the disease resembling gonorrhea, lead to infertility.