معاذ أبوغراره 2911107

Traditional Medical Practices
The importance of traditional medicines for humans as well as animals in Africa both now and in the past is enormous. Traditional medicine takes on a diverse and complex definition and though it involves some aspects of mind-body interventions and use of animal-based products, it is largely plant-based.
Conventional medicine focuses on experiment and disease causing pathogens. Traditional medicine however postulates that the human being is both a somatic and spiritual entity, and that disease can be due to supernatural causes arising from the anger of ancestral or evil spirits, the result of witchcraft or the entry of an object into the body. It is therefore not only the symptoms of the disease that are taken into account, but also psychological and sociological factors. Thus the holistic nature and culture-based approach to traditional healthcare is an important aspect of the practice, and sets it apart from conventional western approaches.
For most communities studied in Kenya, Tanzania, Swaziland and South Africa, as is the case with most of Africa, traditional medicine is the only affordable and accessible health care. African traditional medicine thus plays an almost inestimable role in the health care delivery, and the pharmacopoeia of indigenous prescriptions traditionally used in Africa including the communities studied is colossal.
African traditional medicine practice includes diverse health practices, remedies, approaches, knowledge and beliefs incorporating plant, animal and mineral products, spiritual therapies and charms. Traditional healers utilise a variety of approaches to diagnose, treat or prevent illness.