Bitter Pills:Medicines & The Third World Poor | Page 166

A survey in Sri Lanka reveals that a quarter of traditional healers and 40% of
college-trained Ayurvedic healers already refer patients to modern health
practitioners.(40> It is hoped that with joint Ayurvedic/allopathic clinics patients
will benefit from choice in whom they consult, and can be referred to the more
suitable source of treatment - for example modern drug therapy for TB, but the
Ayurvedic healer for stress and other psychological problems. A pilot joint-clinic
was set up in Kandy, Sri Lanka in 1980 and similar clinics already operate in parts
of India.
The second advantage is that modern practitioners can benefit from the knowledge
and experience of indigenous healers, particularly in the use of herbal medicines
that can provide simple and readily available treatments.
The Director of the Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine in Ghana
has attributed the past failure of many plant-screening programmes to the fact
that no attempt was made to learn from local healers.<4I) A growing number of
people trained in modern medicine have recognised the wisdom of this approach.
One doctor in India recently set up a 'self-reliant alternatives to western medicines'
project to tap existing knowledge about herbal medicines and put it to good use.
Working from a base at a people's health project, in the State of Maharashtra,
Dr. Dhruv Mankad is making contact with individuals and groups that have a
special knowlege of local medicine and homeopathy. His aim is to compile a list
of herbal remedies and establish which are the most successful by testing them
out in clinical practice. The result 2