Anthropology Archive

Using Indigenous Contagion Theory in Public Health Education

• Get Pregnant Quickly and Naturally Within 2 Months
• The Secret of How To Grow African American Hair
• American Pronunciation Guides for ESL Perfectionists

The incorporation of indigenous healers into public health programs is of vital importance because they provide the vast majority of medical services worldwide. Programs for the prevention of contagious disease typically fail to incorporate indigenous concepts regarding contamination; this is particularly significant because many involve avoidance of naturalistic infectious agents and polluting environments that biomedicine recognizes as sources of infection. Green (1999a) suggests that indigenous beliefs be used in public health programs for addressing contagious disease because they express ideas similar to germ theory. Health education programs that use the indigenous language and conceptual frameworks provide a culturally relevant platform that facilitates the adoption of preventive behaviors.

Green points out that concepts about diseases caused by small worms are widespread in Africa. These theories are overlooked because they do not fit with the stereotype that indigenous disease theories are animistic and supernatural, illustrated in Murdock's (1980) consideration of contagion beliefs as mystical causation and pollution as a supernatural belief. Validating the beliefs of indigenous systems enhances the ability to bridge traditional systems and health education.

Indigenous theories are in substantial agreement with biomedical models in interpreting some of Africa's most serious diseases in a naturalistic framework that Green calls "indigenous contagion theory." This theory assumes that diseases result from exposures, including a "folk germ theory" of naturalistic infection, pollution, environmental exposures, and taboo violation. Naturalistic infection theories reflect medically sound beliefs in considering diseases to be caused by the presence of tiny organisms, often worms or insects, and other entities invisible to the eye and emphasizing the avoidance of exposure to polluting, impure, and contaminating substances.