People’s perception of Corona virus, traditional health, and western health in fight against Corona virus

Abstract

The study focused on the people’s perception of Coronavirus, traditional health, and western health in fight against Coronavirus. Experts contend that government agencies and health officials should join forces with traditional healers rather than oppose them to successfully combat COVID-19. Traditional health care, through several trado-medical scientists seemed to be mostly patronized by all sector of health institution and the youth. This obviously signifies that traditional health which has long been taken for granted and rejected for many years has a critical role to play in making reasonable health care delivery system to the African communities. The indigenous health care system and its methods are being demonized by youth and certain scientific institutions because they are linked to witchcraft and other wicked customs. The researcher noticed that, in the twenty-first century, there appeared to be an idea of interfacing Traditional Health Practices (THPs) with Western doctors. It appears that basic health care systems were provided by traditional medical professionals in civilizations prior to the arrival of colonialism. The objective of the study was as follows, to explore the perceptions of traditional health and western health practitioners in fight against Coronavirus. The study adopted an employ African healing theory. The study used a qualitative research design and was exploratory in nature. Data was generated using semi-structured interviews as data collection instruments. The study’s finding shows that symptoms of coronavirus are the same in traditional health care and western health care perspectives as the traditional practitioner and western practitioner observe the common symptoms such as coughing, sweating, high temperature having mucus, unable to breath and diarrhea or vomiting which are the same symptoms of normal influenza. The study recommends Integration of traditional health and western healthcare system in leveraging the strength of both approaches to combat corona virus and promote overall health well-being and Future research on traditional health care in advancing rural livelihoods.