ABSTRACT
Despite biomedicine being the mainstream healthcare model across the globe, African people still uphold indigenous conceptualisations of health and illness. As such, when disease occurs in any society, both individuals and the community interpret it within its socio-cultural context. Health and sickness are perceived within their psychosomatic and psychosocial dimensions. In this regard, a patient is never left alone to cope with an illness as his/her well-being is dependent upon his/her harmonious relationship with the community. As such, the chapter explores and discusses the use of indigenous plant remedies as therapeutic interventions for disease outbreaks within the African communities. Using a case study of the Ndau indigenous community in the eastern part of Zimbabwe, the chapter also foregrounds the inherent challenges encountered in observing the prescribed COVID-19 protocols during the death and burial rituals. This is in light of the fact that for most African indigenous communities, particularly among the Ndau people, death and burial rituals are communal affairs. Affirming the importance of integrating indigenous and bio-medical interventions, the chapter concludes with a discussion of how the Ndau people have embraced COVID-19 vaccination and integrated it into their indigenous responses to this life-threatening and life-diminishing pandemic.
