[ad_1]
The inclusion of cultural medicine in conventional medical care can improve health results for aborigines and islanders of the Strait of Torres, but lack of understanding is preventing access.
While 90 percent of indigenous people would like to access cultural medicine, many have difficulty doing so, according to the research of the University of Southern Cross.
Alana Gall’s research companion directed the study, who found that cultural medications were largely absent from the policy that guides medical practice.
Only nine of 52 policies examined in the study mentioned cultural medicine, said Dr. Gall.
“There was little or no orientation about what health professionals should do if their patients use or want to use cultural medicine,” said Truwulway’s wife to AAP.
Cultural medications cover topical medications, ingested or inhaled derived from plants and animals, as well as foods with medical properties, practical healing such as massage, ceremony, dance and song, spiritual healing and country as a healer.
Dr. Gall said that cultural medicine was often seen as “equally relevant” in medical policy.
“We are asking for what we call medical pluralism, where you have the idea of using both biomedicine, which is our type of standard medical care in Australia, as well as cultural medicine,” he said.
“It shouldn’t be one in the exclusion of the other.”
Dr. Gall said that better training and information for all health professionals on cultural medicine was necessary.
She has been working with the National Controlled Health Organization of the Aboriginal Community to develop the first cultural medicine guidelines to combat the lack of information.
“If (doctors) have some guidance in this regard, they can be more respectful in that space,” said Dr. Gall.
“We are going to see the aborigines and islanders of the Strait of Torres feeling safer in those environments from a cultural perspective, but also safer to reveal them than they use them because they will not only be told that they have to stop using it.”
But this work is just the beginning.
Dr. Gall said that the inclusion of cultural medicines in Medicare and in the pharmaceutical benefits scheme could also train professionals and patients.
She said that this would require much more work to prevent indigenous knowledge from being appropriate for commercial gain with little or no benefit returned to the community.
“I see it how to decolonize medical care, but we need to do things in the right order,” said Dr. Gall.
“We need cultural medicines to integrate into conventional medical care, but we also need to put the job in defining, understanding and protecting knowledge associated with them.”
[ad_2]
Source link
