ABSTRACT
On the basis of a resolution adopted at the 1977 World Health Organization Health Assembly, many developing countries have taken action to develop policies and programmes for the integration of traditional systems of medicine into national and primary health care systems. In 1978 the International Conference on Primary Health Care (PHC), held in Alma Ata under the sponsorship of the WHO and UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund), passed additional resolutions to implement its strategy of attaining ‘Health for all by the year 2000’; these resolutions promote the incorporation of useful elements of traditional medicine (TM), as well as its practitioners, into national health systems. It is well documented that pluralistic medical services exist in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America (Leslie 1976; Bannerman et al. 1983; Leslie and Young 1992). The recent shift among international donors and in national policy in favour of providing support for TM and incorporating it into the dominant modern/ Western health care programmes stems from a range of factors. For example, the WHO observes that the last decade has seen considerable growth in popular, official and commercial interest in the use of traditional practitioners and their remedies. Indeed, for the majority of the world’s population these have been, and in many instances are still, the only forms of medical care readily available. In the 1980s, indigenous health care resources (traditional practices, remedies and practitioners) were thus increasingly brought under the purview of more formal health services.
