ABSTRACT
African traditional belief generally includes a supreme God, or creative spirit, and lesser spirits. It accepts a continued existence after death, with parents and grandparents continuing to take an interest in, and even to participate in the activities of, their families. Western medicine arrived in much of Africa along with Christian missionaries, and some of the conflict between Western and traditional medicine is a spillover from the conflict between mission Christianity and traditional belief. Africans may see less conflict between the two systems than Europeans do. In Malawi the same word, Singanga, is used to describe all medical staff in both systems. The imitating of European and American medical courses in African universities may be quite inappropriate to African needs. Education of the population in the logic of Western science, and in what Western medicine tries to do and how it operates, can help to avoid these disagreements.
