Traditional healers mark African Medicine Day

DEPUTY Health and Social Services Minister Petrina Haingura has called on traditional healers in the country to work collectively for a better future of their profession.

Haingura made the appeal at the celebration of the tenth African Traditional Medicine Day at the United Nations Plaza in Windhoek on Saturday.Her remarks come few days after the Swapo Party Youth called on the government to recognise traditional healers and to promote the formation of a national traditional healers’ association.Haingura said the government is in the process of finalising the Traditional Health Practitioners Bill.The legislation is aimed at ‘protecting the public from dangerous and opportunistic practices, while at the same time protecting the positive aspects of traditional medicine,’ she said.The bill will establish the Traditional Health Practitioners’ Council, a body which will oversee traditional healers.Those in the profession have welcomed the governments’ efforts, saying the bill will bring more unity among healers and it should be implemented as soon as possible.The day saw traditional healers come together and showcasing their potions.Hilde Amunyela, a traditional healer from Windhoek, said her profession is underestimated by some people, despite its significance.She believes that they need more recognition and protection than what they get now since they ‘heal diseases that medical doctors fail to cure’.The 83-year-old Amunyela, who has been in the trade since 1958, called for healers of all tribes to unite against those who are in the business to enrich themselves rather than serving the people.The Namibian spoke to Paulina Handula, who calls herself a doctor and mobilises healers around the Khomas Region in order to have a database of who is who in the profession.Like Amunyela, the 66-year-old Handula is ‘disgusted by so-called traditional healers who are just in the profession to make a quick buck while ripping off people’.She condemned the traditional healers who lure patients using newspaper advertisements, describing it as a ‘sad situation’. The Windhoek-based healer said she invited some of those healers to attend the celebration at UN Plaza but none of them turned up.Amunyela, who entered the profession at the age of 14 against the will of her parents, said she is one of the healers who are often invited to State medical centres to heal patients.

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