A 27-year losing battle for recognition

While the role of traditional health practitioners  is well-recognised and appreciated in many progressive countries, including China and Japan, locally dingaka have spent their lives on the terraces, trodden underfoot by modern medicine.

Many traditional health practitioners (called dingaka in the vernecular) had hoped a landmark World Health Organisation (WHO) report highlighting the importance of incorporating traditional expertise and medicine into the fight against HIV/AIDS, would change paradigms among health authorities. The WHO report entitled Prospects for Involving Traditional Health Practitioners was produced in July 1990 in Francistown and showed that research policies in most countries did not reflect the role of traditional medicine in the delivery of health care.