Culture Views on Health
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- Date Submitted: 01/17/2011 03:27 PM
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Culture Views on Health:
All groups of people face issues in adapting to their environment. Humans adapt to varying environments by developing cultural solutions to meet the needs for survival. Indeed, culture is a universal experience, but no two cultures are exactly alike. Cultural patterns are learned, and it is important for health care providers to note that members of a particular group may not share identical cultural experiences.
Culture refers to learned patterns of behaviors, beliefs, and values shared by individuals in a particular social group. It provides people with both their identity and a framework for understanding experience. In its broadest sense, a culture is a group of people with similar ethnic background, language, religion, family values, and life views.
Africans and the Traditional Views of Health Care:
Spirituality is a predominant aspect of African cultures. The universe is seen as a living system with such connection, through a living spirit, of the individual, the family and community, the environment, and the world beyond the grave.
For the most part, the multicultural and pluralistic societies of Africa, made up of members of different ethnic, racial, religious, and social groups, live side by side and maintain their own values and traditions.
African cultures define health not only as the absence of disease but also as the balance between the individual, the community, the environment, and the spiritual world illness is caused by imbalance of these systems. The sangoma can identify the cause of the imbalance and will advise as to the most appropriate intervention to restore the balance, which may include western medicine, herbal treatments, or sacrifice to the ancestors.
There is No Disease without a Cure:
Most Africans believe that every disease has a cure, placed there by the Creator-God to save life. This cure can be derived from any living or non-living entity. The duty of the living and their specialists is only to...
All groups of people face issues in adapting to their environment. Humans adapt to varying environments by developing cultural solutions to meet the needs for survival. Indeed, culture is a universal experience, but no two cultures are exactly alike. Cultural patterns are learned, and it is important for health care providers to note that members of a particular group may not share identical cultural experiences.
Culture refers to learned patterns of behaviors, beliefs, and values shared by individuals in a particular social group. It provides people with both their identity and a framework for understanding experience. In its broadest sense, a culture is a group of people with similar ethnic background, language, religion, family values, and life views.
Africans and the Traditional Views of Health Care:
Spirituality is a predominant aspect of African cultures. The universe is seen as a living system with such connection, through a living spirit, of the individual, the family and community, the environment, and the world beyond the grave.
For the most part, the multicultural and pluralistic societies of Africa, made up of members of different ethnic, racial, religious, and social groups, live side by side and maintain their own values and traditions.
African cultures define health not only as the absence of disease but also as the balance between the individual, the community, the environment, and the spiritual world illness is caused by imbalance of these systems. The sangoma can identify the cause of the imbalance and will advise as to the most appropriate intervention to restore the balance, which may include western medicine, herbal treatments, or sacrifice to the ancestors.
There is No Disease without a Cure:
Most Africans believe that every disease has a cure, placed there by the Creator-God to save life. This cure can be derived from any living or non-living entity. The duty of the living and their specialists is only to...