Attitudes of modern and traditional medical practitioners towards integration of the two practices

Abstract

A cross-sectional study was done to assess the attitudes of modern and traditional medical practitioners in Jimma Zone towards the idea of integration or co- operation. The results of this study show that most of the practitioners - both traditional and modern would like co-operation of the two practices although considerable proportion of modern medical practitioners and students want to see some improvement regarding traditional medicine such as training of the practitioners, and establishing adequate monitoring mechanisms. Most modern medical practitioners think that traditional medicine has an advantage over modern medicine in that it is cheap and accessible to most of the people. On the other hand, they said traditional medicine has many disadvantages too, among which the practitioners do not know how to determine doses of their preparation which may result in toxicity. Most of the traditional practitioners get their drugs from plant sources. The implications of the results were discussed and recommendations made.