2015 Volume 2015 Issue 20 Pages 1-16
This study examines behavior changes pertaining to traditional medical practices as a result of health intervention and knowledge transmission by community health promoters in rural Amhara, with a specific focus on changes in people’s treatment-seeking behavior for the traditional folk illness known as “milk teeth diarrhea.” The extraction of milk teeth is a traditional treatment for this condition, and is considered in several publications to be one of numerous “harmful traditional practices (HTPs).” Interviews with people in villages and in the medical sector reveal that changes in treatment-seeking behavior for folk illness, ranging from consultations with traditional healers to treatment in modern medical facilities, are not necessarily led by changes in the folk classification of the illness. In the current cultural context, in which the Ethiopian government is promoting the abolishment of HTPs, the main drivers of change in health-seeking behaviors can be described in terms of the recommendation of modern medical treatments and the negation of traditional customs, two different processes that act simultaneously but are not always linked to each other. Thus, health-promotion programs should be sensitive to local, cultural, and actual circumstances when providing training to community health promoters in transitional periods from traditional to modern medicine.
