12423: 12418: Health Volunteers Overseas (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Jean-Marie Florestal <sonice1953@yahoo.com>

Keywords: Voodoo, Culture, healthcare

VISHNUSURF@aol.com wrote << Ms. Wick states that
Haiti's health problems are "complicated by . . . "the
influence of voodoo in healing the sick . . . " This
reflects remarkable ignorance on her part of Haitian
culture and the underlying paternalism of
her efforts to serve the poor.>>

I am curious to find out the data used by VISHNUSURF
to support the opposite view to Ms. Wick's, that is:
the influence of voodoo in healing the sick does not
complicate the health problems in Haiti. While I would
concede that I don't know for sure who of the two is
right, having been born and raised in Haiti, I find it
easier to believe Ms. Wick. However, in support of
VISHNUSURF's point of view, in many rural areas in
Haiti, the "dokte feuilles" a.k.a as the "voodoo
priest," is the most or only knowledgeable health care
provider available. Knowledgeable here means having
more knowledge about alleviating pain than the average
person in the area.

The anecdotal observations I can bring here are that
it seems to me in most cases of death of someone not
so old - younger than 60 years old - the perception by
the majority of the people living outside of the major
urban areas where I grew up was that the death was not
natural. Any strange noise heard during the night of
the funeral was interpreted as being part of the
ritual of resuscitating the dead. I personally found
that perception to complicate my understanding of the
magnitude of some diseases as causes of death in
Haiti. So much so, that as an adult living in the
States, I wonder some times how many of the easily
diagnosed diseases here caused deaths or unnecessary
sufferings in Haiti without being identified as such
when I was growing up there. Some types of those
diseases that come to mind are heart, cancer and
bacteria related. Let me add here that my best guess
to define the "most cases" used above would be around
60% of cases of death of a person younger than 60
years old. Also, it appeared to me that the more
educated the person was, which the urban areas had the
most, the less likely he or she fell in the group
perceiving most deaths as not naturally caused.

Thus, because of the belief of a large portion of the
population that most diseases are caused by poisons of
the "bokor," there is maybe a credible conclusion that
scientific cure is often not sought, nor available, in
cases of curable illness in most rural areas in Haiti.
Instead, relatives of the sick waste valuable time
trying to take care of the spiritual causes of the
sickness allowing the deterioration of the medical
condition to a point of fatal consequences. If the
complication seen by Ms. Wicks is viewed in that
sense, unless things have changed a lot since I left,
I feel that her conclusions may have been motivated
more by unbiased observations than by cultural
prejudices.

I will admit here that I have no credentials in the
medical nor religious field. My observations here are
purely casual and not statistically based. To top it
all, I did not read the original post of Ms. Wicks. To
the extent that my failure to read it affected in any
way the points made in this post, I am ready to give
back justice to VISHNUSURF's point. However, while
many well-intentioned people from different cultures
have in the past criticized our practices just because
of their differences, in this case I would appreciate
finding the evidence of prejudices before jumping on
the bandwagon.

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