Revolution and Counterrevolution in Nicaragua by Thomas W Walker

Author:Thomas W Walker [Walker, Thomas W]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000309980
Google: b02fDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52424849
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

Traditional Medicine in Revolutionary Health Care

KIRSI VIISAINEN

At the time of the 1979 triumph, a primary goal of the Sandinista government was to improve the health status of the population by organizing the chaotic health-care system inherited from the Somoza regime into the National Unified Health System (SNUS). The shift to planned health care, which involved much popular participation, also brought a change in the official attitude toward traditional medicine1 and a change in its status. In particular, traditional midwives, who had been ignored, became a potential resource of primary health care.

The plans of the revolutionary government to integrate traditional medicine into the health-care system, rather than unique, were in line with a position strongly promoted by international health agencies to health planners in Third World countries as a way of extending access to primary health care despite scarce resources.2 Similar integration programs were designed and implemented in several Third World countries; most of these programs concentrated on the training of traditional birth attendants because their work was assumed to fit more easily than that of other traditional agents into primary health care. In the case of Nicaragua, the shift toward integrating traditional practices into the health-care system was gradual, part of the trend toward encouraging popular participation in health that was one of the principles of the postrevolutionary Nicaraguan health policies.

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