The 20th annual Symposium will be held on Thursday, April 23, 2009.

A Historical Problem and a Contemporary Impact: Health Care, Gender and Traditional Medicine in Ghana
Norris 104, 1:15 PM

Kwame  Sakyi,   '09 65
   Major: Chemistry
   Hometown: Sunyani, Ghana

Sponsor(s): David Eaton
Support: FURSCA-Orpha Leiter Irwin Research Fellowship in Pre-Medicine

Abstract: 
Even though women I interviewed in Ghana for my research about traditional medicine (TM) could not deduce maternal mortality quantitatively or describe birth complications accurately in biological terms, its harsh reality is still part of their experiences of childbirth. Consequently, for mothers, birth is a fight for one’s own survival—an event during which one has to manipulate, seek and utilize resources that will improve the chances of surviving childbirth. Traditional medicine in Ghana is used by pregnant women to augment the chances of survival during childbirth. However its usage has created a contention between biomedical health care providers and pregnant women over its efficacy.

Because of specific cases of hypervolumic shock, obstructed labor and hemorrhage, biomedical care providers consider traditional medicine to be problematic. In contrast, mothers view TM as a helpful and needed alternative to the dangers of childbirth. Since biomedical health care providers generally have a negative view of TM, pregnant women reported that they would be humiliated, insulted, and threatened during a birth complication if they reported their use of TM. To avert the negative reaction of health care providers, this research showed that out of the 42 women sampled, 85% of them admitted they will lie to health workers if they were asked of their use of TM. There is poor communication between Ghanaian women and health care providers regarding traditional medicine.

This poor communication, I argue has its roots in British medicalization of birth in colonial Ghana and its influence on the use of traditional medicine. The medicalization of birth in Ghana did not significantly reduce maternal and infant mortality or increase childbirth at its institutions, but it introduced birth procedures such as caesarean section and forceps delivery, which because of its high mortality rate, encouraged women's continual utilization of TM into the post independent era. The introduction of these procedures, and maternal death in general, redefined the role of traditional medicine in childbirth in the colonial and postcolonial period. Traditional medicine, with its associated beliefs and practices provided a complex socio-medical and spiritual role to promote vaginal deliveries and prevent infant death by intervening in perceived medical childhood conditions. The unsuccessful outcomes of medicalized procedures, because of cultural, institutional and medical problems created another third consideration for use of traditional medicine. Women continued to use TM to create conditions that would avert procedures they associated with death at hospitals, which forceps delivery and cesarean section was at the center.

However, because of specific mentioned cases of birth complications, biomedical health providers do not want women to use traditional in this contemporary period creating the poor communication between them and mothers. In order to comprehend the conditions underscoring high mortality during childbirth in Africa, it is important we understand the historical development leading to this poor communication, which affects women.

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