Practitioners to share ideas
TRADITIONAL health practitioners from all over Southern Africa are expected to gather and share ideas on how to tackle various illnesses in Malamulele, Limpopo, today.
All this in celebration of African Traditional Medicine Day today.
Southern African Development Community Unified Traditional Health Practitioners Association president Sylvester Hlati said the day offered a platform for practitioners to discuss ways and means to deal with various illnesses.
“A patient is very important to our livelihoods and we need to know exactly what they are suffering from in order for us to be able to deal with their illnesses. We use the African Traditional Medicines Day to educate one another about the best practices in our profession because we believe what God has given us should be put to good use.”
The event will start with a night of drumming and dancing as a way of summoning ancestors to give them more powers to help heal patients.
Hlati said for healing, they consulted with divine bones which helped them on how best to treat their patients.
“Healing is a calling from ancestors and if traditional healers can kill people for muthi purposes they risk losing their healing powers as those ancestors will run away from them.”
He said they were worried that while they had done their part to cooperate with western medical doctors they hadn’t get any reciprocation.
The organisation has more than 7 000 members and practitioners from Netherlands were expected to attend.