Tan, Mengxin;
Otake, Yuko;
Tamming, Teisi;
Akuredusenge, Valerie;
Uwinama, Beatha;
Hagenimana, Fabien;
(2021)
Local experience of using traditional medicine in northern Rwanda: a qualitative study.
BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
, 21
, Article 210. 10.1186/s12906-021-03380-5.
Preview |
PDF
Mengxin and Otake 2021.pdf - Published Version Download (662kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Background: The popular use of traditional medicine in low-income settings has previously been attributed to poverty, lack of education, and insufficient accessibility to conventional health service. However, in many countries, including in Rwanda, the use of traditional medicine is still popular despite the good accessibility and availability of conventional health services. This study aims to explore why traditional medicine is popularly used in Rwanda where it has achieved universal health coverage.// Methods: The qualitative study, which included in-depth interviews and participant observations, investigated the experience of using traditional medicine as well as the perceived needs and reasons for its use in the Musanze district of northern Rwanda. We recruited 21 participants (15 community members and 6 traditional healers) for in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis was conducted to generate common themes and coding schemes.// Results: Our findings suggest that the characteristics of traditional medicine are responding to community members’ health, social and financial needs which are insufficiently met by the current conventional health services. Participants used traditional medicine particularly to deal with culture-specific illness – uburozi. To treat uburozi appropriately, referrals from hospitals to traditional healers took place spontaneously.// Conclusions: In Rwanda, conventional health services universally cover diseases that are diagnosed by the standard of conventional medicine. However, this universal health coverage may not sufficiently respond patients’ social and financial needs arising from the health needs. Given this, integrating traditional medicine into national health systems, with adequate regulatory framework for quality control, would be beneficial to meet patients’ needs.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Local experience of using traditional medicine in northern Rwanda: a qualitative study |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12906-021-03380-5 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-021-03380-5 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s). 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
| Keywords: | Traditional medicine, Traditional healer, Community members, Illness |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10179511 |
Loading...
Loading...Loading...Loading...Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
