Uniting behind a common goal: Collaboration between traditional healers and allopathic health care workers to improve rural snakebite care.

Steinhorst, Jonathan, Tianyi, Frank-Leonel ORCID: 0000-0001-5687-5285, Habib, Abdulrazaq Garba, Oluoch, George O ORCID: 0000-0001-9857-953X, Lalloo, David G ORCID: 0000-0001-7680-2200 and Stienstra, Ymkje (2022) Uniting behind a common goal: Collaboration between traditional healers and allopathic health care workers to improve rural snakebite care. Toxicon: X, 16. 100140-.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.toxcx.2022.100140

Abstract

Snakebite envenoming is an acute medical emergency which affects hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, primarily in remote rural areas of low-and middle income countries in the Global South. A considerable proportion of snakebite patients turn to traditional healers (THs) for help, driven by a number of push and pull factors. These include socio-cultural factors, geographical proximity, and the absence or inaccessibility of overstretched and often costly allopathic healthcare services. Although traditional healers and allopathic healthcare staff share a common focus -the recovery and well-being of their patients- both systems operate largely in parallel to each other with collaborations being an exception rather than the rule. This is to the detriment of snakebite patients, who frequently find themselves being caught-up in the dualism between the two separate systems. Given the right circumstances, snakebite patients could benefit from elements of care from both modalities. Here, we have reviewed the role of THs in snakebite care and explored how their integration into the formal healthcare system could improve the implementation and outcome of care. The effective recruitment of THs to aid in disease control and treatment efforts in diseases other than snakebite underscores the potential benefits of this strategy. Carefully devised proof of concept studies are needed to test our hypothesis that collaborations between the formal healthcare sector and THs are feasible and improve outcomes in snakebite care.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Allopathic healthcare, Collaboration, Health seeking, Snakebite envenoming, Traditional healers, Traditional medicine
Divisions:	Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	24 Jan 2023 14:18
Last Modified:	02 May 2023 18:36
DOI:	10.1016/j.toxcx.2022.100140
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxcx.2022.100140
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3167856