The conclusion in the article shows that indigenous medicine and personnel believe that there should an effort to understand and learn more about traditional medicine. The questions that come into mind are whether this kind of medicine should be entrenched to mainstream medicine. There should be research undertaken to look into the use of indigenous medicine. Another question that is raised here is the extent at which witchcraft and indigenous medicine are related. There is a lack of differentiation between the two areas. The Aboriginal introduced herself as witchcraft. The issue is how true the statement. If the ideas of the Aboriginals are entrenched into mainstream medicine, it will be like black medicine and ideas will be integrated with medicine.
I remember a situation in my life where I used to believe that all illnesses were to be healed by professional doctors alone until one day I saw my mother healed by an aboriginal herbalist. My mother had a swelling in her hand that did not respond to any form of medication. It was not until the Aboriginal native came to her attention. The Aboriginal native herbalist gave her some herbs which after two weeks were able to restore the better condition of my mother. I started thinking and meditating at the enormous input that indigenous medicine can bring if they are allowed and assisted in their work. I have started thinking at how they can be assisted to bring light to some diseases which have been hard to deal with.
My personal definition of health is that state of the body where there is utmost good status of the body with good mechanism to fight diseases. This definition has changed with the meeting of Aboriginal traditionalists. I have changed the view in that I believe the Aboriginal have some value they can add to medicine and health.
References
Byard, R 1988, 'Traditional medicine of Aboriginal Australia', CMAJ, vol 139, pp. 792-795.
Eckermann, A 2010, 'Chapter 6: People-centered care', in Bridging cultures in Aboriginal health, Churchill Livingstone, Elsevier, Sydney.
Salem, L, Thompson, E & elvin, HL 2007, Bush tucker in kidney failure and diabetes, Amgen, Sydney.
Taylor, K & Guerin, P 2010, Healthcare and indigenous Australians: Cultural safety in practice, Palgrave McMillan, Sydney.
Tjilari, A & Peter, R 2000, 'Introduction', in Ngangkari - Anangu way, Sydney Publishers, Sydney.
