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Zinatha offers health sector a hand
The Herald (Zimbabwe)
November 08, 2006

http://www1.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=11103&cat=1&livedate=11/8/2006

THE Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association yesterday said it could help resuscitate the country's ailing health delivery system if its members are allowed to practice traditional medicine in empty hospital structures.

This was said by Zinatha president Professor Gordon Chavunduka while giving oral evidence before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health and Child Welfare on traditional medicines policy in Zimbabwe.

He said Zinatha was yet to get a response from the Government, two years after making a formal request.

"We always see hospital rooms empty and we have asked the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare why they could not allow those to be used by traditional healers.

"It's two years now and that has not been implemented," he said.

He said most traditional healers were finding it difficult to have decent and acceptable places to operate from.

On the issue of traditional healers being empowered to book workers off duty, Prof Chavunduka said the announcement in September this year created confusion because traditional healers were authorised to give off days to patients as far back as 1981.

"We have been doing that since then, it's not just starting now. Many of the traditional healers have assistants to help them fill the off days forms," he said.

The Government in September gave traditional healers permission to give their patients off days from work in the same manner that medical doctors do.

Prof Chavunduka said about five different associations of traditional healers were operating in the country although Zinatha was the only association that was approved by Parliament in the 1980s.

"With many of those traditional healers associations, there is now no discipline in the practice," he said.

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