natural "healers"

you may need to click on the picture of the baby to enlarge it in order to see the scars on his abdomen



this girl was burned with a cow's horn to cure her kidney infection


every sunday and tuesday from 3 till 4pm i train my nine tba's. we sit under the shelter in the waiting area and drink chai and i teach them about whatever topic seems relevant at the time. often the topic is chosen for me by my witnessing a practice that i want to talk more about. today's topic was one that has been a long time in the coming.... i wanted to talk about the extremely disturbing practices that i've seen employed in the name of tradition and natural healing.
the other day i had a patient come in complaining of fever and severe flank pain. she had the signs of a urinary tract infection and i suspected a kidney infection as well. i asked her to lift her shirt so i could determine the location of the pain. she lifted up her shirt and i gasped. "what HAPPENED?" i ask joyce. the entire area of skin around the kidney, front and back, is covered with large circular burns, each full of numerous blisters. some of them are necrotic. joyce explains that the natural healer had taken a bulls horn, had sanded the blunt end, had placed it in the fire and had used it to burn the girl. "what??? why???". to heal her, of course. i prescribe her a round of antibiotics and tell joyce to make sure that the girl knows that it is the medicine that is going to get rid of her pain, not the burns. and that was just the intro. the next patient i see who has experienced natural healing is a 40 day old baby whose mother died in childbirth. his grandmother brought him in as he was severely dehydrated after a prolonged bout with diarrhoea (thanks to bottle feeding). his entire stomach is covered in vertical scars where they cut him with a razor from below his nipples to below his bellybutton. again i ask why. "to get rid of the bad blood". "what bad blood?" "the bad blood that is making him sick". then there was the 2 year old diabetic whose parents circumcised her in order to "heal" her, and ended up killing her. then there was the little girl who had a bad cough who had her uvula cut out without anaesthesia and died. then our driver came to me and told me that his infant daughter was crying too much at night and his wife wanted to take her to be cut. i asked him to bring the baby in and we discovered that they weren't burping her and she was having gas pain. hind tells me about a man who broke his arm. he had it casted at the hospital, then went to a natural healer. the healer removed the cast, shredded his arm and packed it with wet mud. i ask hind if it worked and she says "i don't know. he is died now". today a child who had been transferred to the SFC was moved back to the TFC as her mother wasn't giving her the food and it was also discovered that she had been circumcised. i ask my staff what they think of natural healing and they're pretty divided. the "city" women think it's ridiculous, but the village women sheepishly defend it. hawa had hurt her foot before i got here and had had it treated by carmenza. she points to a scar where a woman had cut her foot open and thrown wet sand into the wound, and credits it with curing her. i say no, you had it treated by a doctor who then immobilized it until it was healed. all your natural healer did was expose you to infection. i ask them to tell me more about the common practices so i know what i'm up against.
at the training today i sat down and told my staff (midwives, nurse assistants and tba's) that i want to explain why natural healing doesn't work and is, in fact, dangerous and what needs to happen instead. we start with diarrhoea. diarrhoea is cured here by the healer pulling 4 of the child's teeth, with no anaesthesia and no sterile equipment. the healer decides which four of the teeth are the "bad" teeth, and they use their dirty instruments to yank those teeth from the child's gums. i explain that there is no medical rational to this practice and, instead of this, they need to know how to properly handle diarrhoea. i teach them how to make ORS at home, which is as easy as putting a pinch of salt and 4 fingers full of sugar into a glass of water, and having the child drink a cup after each episode to avoid dehydration. next i address the cutting of the uvula (the thing that hangs at the back of your throat). this practice is used to treat coughs, vomiting and oedema. the patient is held down and a sharp knife (from now on just assume that no anaesthesia is used and nothing is sterile) is used to slice the uvula off. occasionally they also cut out the tonsils for good measure. as someone who had their tonsils removed under anaesthesia and thought it the worst pain imaginable upon waking, this thought makes me literally nauseous. i explain that cutting anything out of the throat is not going to cure coughing or vomiting or anything for that matter. most coughs and vomiting will spontaneously resolve themselves given time, and the ones that don't need to be checked by a doctor. i decide not to broach the circumcision topic too much as i'm waiting for my trusty companion and right-hand woman (aicha) to get back to be my translator. i figure it's a sensitive enough subject that i want someone with a gentle spirit and a good command of the english language to translate for me. next i bring up the taking of the razors to people's skin. this is used for fevers, among other things. i tell them that rather than slicing people open, they should remove the clothing, sponge the patient down and fan them to cool them down. if the fever is high, during malaria season or recurrent, they need a medical checkup. as far as any other illness, there is nothing that is going to be healed by slicing someone open with a razor and rubbing wet sand full of animal excrement into them. the next practice is one that actually gives me shivers to think about....it's the treatment for jaundice. the healer has a forked metal prong that is put in the fire until it is red-hot, then it is applied to the upper arm, the forearm and the freaking fingernails. i ask them if they realize that putting hot pokers on people's fingernails is a method of torture in some countries. they laugh, i don't. i tell them that jaundice equals doctors appointment. period. and saving the best for last... the treatment for headaches. there are many treatments for headaches here and none of them involve tylenol. one method has the healer wrapping both hands around the patients throat and squeezing tightly until the person starts to pass out. i tell them that in my country that's called attempted murder and it's highly illegal. the next method involves the healer making two deep vertical incisions in the patients temples, then smearing the wound with ash, which actually makes a tattoo that i thought was for decorative purposes. another method has the healer gather the skin in the middle of the forehead in order to bite it. another tradition has the person tie a string around a tree and then walk around it once in the morning and once at night. of all of the many methods they told me about, my favorite, by far, is the one where the person runs head-first into a certain kind of tree 3 times, twice a day. this was the point where i started laughing so hard i could only sputter "that is the WORST cure for a headache i have EVER heard of". they laughed at my reaction to every single remedy, but this one killed them. this is the point where i ask them if these remedies actually make sense to them. if my leg is broken, does it make sense to take a big stick and break it in 6 more places in order to feel better? they laugh their heads off, which is their response to almost every single thing i do, so i don't know if they grasp the absurdity of the cure or if they just think it's funny to shock me.

so that was the extent of my fight against the medical practices that i would, personally, rather die than be subjected to....