Decolonising undergraduate medical curricula through the integration of African traditional medicine and science – a South African perspective
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Abstract
Background. The South African (SA) healthcare system’s colonial legacy continues to impact its institutions, including in higher education. The integration of African traditional medicine (ATM) into medical curricula offers one avenue for meaningful decolonisation within the health sciences. This could enhance sensitivity towards the significant portion of the population that relies on and uses ATM. However, the extent of ATM integration in medical curricula remains unclear.
Objective. To assess the integration of ATM into current medical curricula at SA universities.
Methods. We used a mixed-methods approach, including: (i) an online search of peer-reviewed publications; (ii) a review of open-access/grey literature from SA medical universities; and (iii)) a direct approach to SA medical universities for relevant information. The structured literature review included a search of English full-text articles on PubMed, EBSCOhost, Scopus and Web of Science databases published between 1994 and 2023, using the search terms: ‘African Traditional Medicine’, ‘health sciences curriculum’, and ‘medical education’. Grey literature, including websites, policy documents and curricula of medical universities, was also reviewed. Faculties of health sciences of the 10 medical universities were directly approached via email to provide details of the integration of ATM into their curricula.
Results. There was limited integration of ATM into medical curricula. The structured literature search demonstrated that only one medical university significantly integrated ATM into their curriculum. Open-access/publicly available evidence revealed some ATM integration in only two universities. Of the four responses received from the direct approaches, two universities integrated some ATM while two had no integration of ATM.
Conclusion. There is a need for deliberate and sustained efforts to integrate ATM into medical universities through policy change and provision of resources for teaching and learning.
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