Bitter Pills:Medicines & The Third World Poor | Page 159
have slit open the swollen legs of a malnourished child, to reduce the swelling.
The child ended up with septicaemia, in addition to malnutrition. This was also
the fate of another child with kwashiorkor, after a kobiraj had made slits in the
skin across her stomach.<13)
REASSURING RITUALS
Traditional healers often wield a great deal of power in their community. Like
the white-coated doctor, they are treated with reverence, even fear. In fact there
are as many parallels as differences between the role performed by the traditional
healer and the doctor. Doctors and healers everywhere tend to build up a mystique
around their healing abilities and limit their role to treating patients. Few attempt
to stimulate patients' awareness or encourage them to take more responsibility
for their own health. Referring to health practitioners in India, one doctor writes
that the "obscurantism of indigenous systems and the elitist mysticism of western
medicine serve one common interest, that is to prevent people's participation in
them in order to further their commercial interests".