Towards an integrated approach to health and medicine in Africa

Abstract: This article frames the intersections of medicine and humanities as intrinsic to understanding the practice of health care in Africa. Central to this manuscript, which draws on empirical findings on the interplay between HIV/AIDS and alternative medicine in Zimbabwe; is the realisation that very limited research has been undertaken to examine ‘HIV/AIDS patient behaviour’ with respect to choice of therapy on the continent (Chavunduka 1998; Bene & Darkoh 2014; O’Brien & Broom 2014). As such, a social approach to health-seeking behaviour questions how decisions about alternative therapies including herbal remedies, traditional healing and faith healing are made. The paper unpacks the realities around how people living with HIV/AIDS – who span different age groups and profess various religious backgrounds, faced with an insurmountable health challenge against a background of limited resources and no cure for the virus – often experience shifts in health-seeking behaviour. Grappling with seemingly simple questions about ‘when, where and how to seek medical attention’, the paper provides pointers to therapy choices and health-seeking behaviour; and it serves as a route into deeper and intense health care practice explorations. In conclusion, the paper proposes that medicine and the humanities should engage seriously with those social aspects of HIV/AIDS which call for an integrated approach to health care practice in Africa. If combined, medicine and the humanities might achieve what neither would alone