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2023

The provision of care by traditional healers: the rationale for setting up in the city of Ouagadougou

Esaïe Sidbeniwende Yanogo et Aude Nikiema
Cet article est une traduction de :
L’offre de soins des tradipraticiens : logique d’implantation dans la ville de Ouagadougou [fr]

Texte intégral

1Traditional practitioners, whose activities have been recognized and integrated into the Burkinabe health system since the 1990s, are relatively little known to health authorities, unlike biomedical care structures. The means implemented by African public health systems have long been based on improving access to primary health care. However, biomedicine has “in no way disrupted the system of patient strategies, except to make it more complex…” (Fainzang, 1985, p. 108). Studies on the use of care show their frequent use by populations. The maintenance of local representations of diseases and the use of appropriate methods of care convinced the WHO to encourage collaborations between practitioners during the 1970s, favoring the gradual establishment of dynamics of recognition of the traditional medicine and its practitioners (Didier, 2015). However, no database provides precise information on their availability and spatial distribution in urban areas. The data collected is based on an exhaustive geolocation of traditional practitioners carried out in 2020 across the entire Ouagalais territory, to which a quantitative survey was associated. Each street was explored to locate exercise locations. In order to be exhaustive, this collection was based on advertising panels, when they existed, supplemented by the list of traditional health practitioners authorized to practice in Burkina Faso, issued by the Ministry of Health, and the list of members issued by the heads of traditional practitioner associations. The collection made it possible to identify 464 traditional practitioners in the city of Ouagadougou. Their profile shows a predominance of women (55%). Most of them are traditional birth attendants. The average age of all these practitioners is 57 years old. The majority of them have no level of education (81.2%). Those who have attended school are distributed as follows: 9% have reached primary level, 7.1% post-primary level and 2.5% university level. The analysis of the spatial distribution of traditional healthcare provision was carried out using the ArcGIS Geographic Information System which provides access to two types of tools to better understand spatial dispersion (Average Nearest Neighbor) was used to define the characteristics of the spatial distribution: dispersed, concentrated or random, of each type of healthcare provision. The centrographic analysis reveals a preferential installation of these practitioners in peripheral districts (92.8%) with a strong presence in the urban margins which are poorly developed and far from attractive commercial sites. Traditional practitioners are classified into several specific categories: 43 are traditional birth attendants, 38 chirkinesitherapists, 21 herbalists, 81 naturotherapists and 5 ritualists. But others identify with several groups: 161 traditional practitioners are in two categories, 92 in three categories and 23 in four categories. However, a new category seems to be emerging, whose practices and locations are closer to the lucrative concerns of conventional private healthcare structures: neo-traditional practitioners. However, they only represent a small part of this category of caregivers whose spatial distribution is quite revealing of the spatial organization of the city. These neotradipractitioners practice in several places of practice including offices. The presence of practices testifies to an evolution of the activity through the desire to get closer to the methods of conventional medicine. Especially with the adoption of conventional medicine practices (use of biomedical equipment, medical examinations, use of social networks, registers, etc.). Some even participate in a referral process with certain biomedical care establishments. This study highlighted the characteristics of the establishment of traditional practitioners in the city of Ouagadougou. If they seem similar to private biomedical structures, mainly the concentrated nature of the geographical distribution, the spatial analysis using GIS tools shows that the concentration is particularly for the benefit of peripheral districts and is not dependent on factors economical, such as visibility along asphalted communication routes.

Table 1: Traditional healers

Number

464

Gender

Female: 55%

Male: 45%

Average age

57

Associations

Member: 246

No member: 218

Recognition by the Ministry of health

Recognized : 6%

No recognized : 94%

Localities at the beginning of practice

Ouagadougou : 320

Others localities : 144

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Référence électronique

Esaïe Sidbeniwende Yanogo et Aude Nikiema, « The provision of care by traditional healers: the rationale for setting up in the city of Ouagadougou »Revue francophone sur la santé et les territoires [En ligne], Varia, mis en ligne le 21 novembre 2023, consulté le 09 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rfst/1906 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/rfst.1906

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Auteurs

Esaïe Sidbeniwende Yanogo

Doctorant, Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo (Burkina Faso)

Aude Nikiema

Maîtresse de recherche, INSS/CNRST (Burkina Faso)

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