New diseases, old therapies : Response to epidemics in East Africa

The A. is concerned with the response by traditional medical systems to epidemics in East Africa. Identifying a distinct scientific or pharmacological aspect to traditional therapeutic systems in East Africa, the A. argues that this was solidly based on a socio-moral and often magico-spiritual context which underpined traditional medical systems in Africa. With no breakthrough at the pharmacological front in the search for a cure for the Acquired Immunal Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), he argues that response to HIV/AIDS has depended entirely on the socio-moral concepts of therapy. Old therapeutic values have been reconstructed and reasserted, and new ones constructed and integrated into the old therapeutic system.