Overview

Traditional bone setting (TBS) has long held a prominent sway in African healthcare, particularly in the more remote and pastoral expanses of Africa. This unique interdisciplinary religious, human rights, and sociological study of medicine manuscript is an examination of not only generationally inherited ethnobotanical, pharmacognosy TBS traditions but also direct observations on how current surgical orthopedic medicine and modern-day social mechanisms clash with traditional healthcare approaches in contemporaneous and inexorable ways. Whether intentionally or not, this entrenched two-tier infrastructure supports, promotes, and maintains a fiscally and socially alienated infrastructure: one that serves the poor general public and the other that is oriented toward serving the prosperous and powerful urban class. Some argue that these disparate structures are destined to remain grassroots-based adversaries, due to systemic mistrust, irreconcilable intellectual and spiritual beliefs, and possible biochemical appropriations. These ensuing biomedical collisions between 'Western' orthopedic trauma care and traditional bonesetters in Cameroon (Central Africa), Ethiopia (East Africa), Ghana (West Africa), and Zimbabwe (South Africa) were documented over eight years via one-on-one interviews with TBS patients, practicing bonesetters, and in-country practicing orthopedic surgeons; evidence-based ethnobotanical research; and patient service preferences.

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9781839997099

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Roxane Richter is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology & Population Health at the School of Public Health, University of Louisville. She has been distinguished as a Fulbright Specialist in Medical Mass Casualty Planning & Response (Ghana), U.S. Embassy Ambassador Distinguished Scholar (University of Gondar, Ethiopia), and a Fulbright-Fogarty NIH Postdoctoral Global Health Fellow (Sub-Saharan Africa). Thomas Max Flowers is a certified emergency physician with the American Board of Emergency Medicine since 1992. He currently practices Emergency Medicine at Commonwealth Health Care Corporation public hospital in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. Elias Kifon Bongmba is a Professor of African Religious Studies at Rice University in Houston, Texas; Harry & Hazel Chavanne Chair in Christian Theology; and Professor of Religion, Faculty Associate Wiess College. Ananya Kassahun Admasu is the founder and former head of the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology at the University of Gondar, Ethiopia. She has served as an educator and a coach on many academic platforms on the African continent. She is currently a consultant to Australian Doctors for Africa, a non-profit organisation.

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