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Traditional, health practitioners to work together

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Hundreds of traditional and conventional health practitioners have gathered in Durban to discuss strategies and ways of working together.

Speaking at the event, eThekwini Mayor Zandile Gumede said training and development, support and knowledge sharing between academics, healers and the current health system was vital to bridge the gap between the various health approaches .

“We are responding to the call made by Deputy President David Mabuza to say that all stakeholders must partner with eThekwini to try and extract what is happening within the district. We are encouraging youth which are traditional leaders to take this opportunity to educate other leaders so that we can move together. We’re also responding to other goals that we have as the health department and we’re doing this with religious leaders and traditional healers and eThekwini municipality staff.”

Also speaking at the event, a District AIDS Council Clinical Researcher, Siyabonga Nzimande, encouraged traditional practitioners to find ways to merge clinical research with traditional medicine in the development of HIV and TB treatment.

“Many South African people they first go to traditional healers for consultations before they actually go into th emainstream helath institution. Therefore we have now come up with a program that’s going to make sure that the traditional healers as well as the researchers are working together especially in finding a cure and also in finding better outcomes of TB in all patients in South Africa.”

 

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