Concept of health, disease, illness and therapy among the people of Addis Ababa

Abstract

Background: In developing countries the situation in health care has become so complex that medical or biological terms alone cannot effectively assess it. After the Second World War particularly concomitant with the development of international public health programs the need to get information on the cultural and social factors that affect health paved a way for the contribution of anthropologists. This increased acceptance of cultural influence on health has led to the frequent use and elaboration of terms like illness, sickness and disease. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the people of Addis Ababa consider health, disease and illness. It also examines the conceptual differences of disease, illness, and health.


Method: The data were collected in Addis Ababa from June 1998 to January 1999 by employing the fundamental techniques of anthropological investigation: participant observation and interviews. In this research healers, patients, elders, and cosmopolitan medicine workers were interviewed and observed.


Result: The people believe that health is the equilibrium between organs in a body, and the equilibrium between the body as a whole and the outside environment. Furthermore, it is found out that the people could not differentiate disease from that of an illness.


Conclusion: Despite the increasing supply of modern manufactured drugs traditional medicines have continued to be widely used in Ethiopia. The availability of medicines and their plants abundantly in the markets of towns show how traditional medicine is popular among the urban residents.


Key Words: Health, disease, illness, somatization, indigenous medicine, cosmopolitan medicine


Annals of African Medicine Vol.3(1 ) 2004: 28-31