Local Use of Traditional and Modern Medicine : A case study in Babati District, Tanzania

Sammanfattning: This study aims to identify traditional medicines which people use in Babati District, Tanzania and to find out which direction the local use and knowledge of traditional medicine is taking in comparison with modern medicine (MM). It is a case study based both on primary and secondary sources. The primary information was gathered with the help of semi-structured interviews and shorter enquiries with people of all categories that use herbal remedies or visit bone fixers and with women that are supported by traditional midwifes. For simple health problems people use TM, for more complicated cases, they go to the hospital. A difference between Babati urban and rural inhabitants was noticed in the usage of traditional and modern medicine, but not between poor and rich people, opinions being slightly different. The Tanzanian government does not encourage the implementation of the TM in the modern medical system and as long as the young generation is not interested to learn the secrets of their parents‟ vocation, this knowledge is threatened by being forgotten. All the herbs used in TM will most likely find their way into the modern pharmacy; however because of the lack of documentation and statistics, it can take up to one hundred years. For this purpose, the gap between TM and MM has to narrow through a better collaboration between all the involved parts.