Traditional health practitioners as primary health care workers

The author conducted a field study in 1993 to evaluate the effectiveness of four projects that were training traditional health practitioners (THPs) to provide primary health care (PHC) services in Ghana, Mexico, and Bangladesh. The study, funded by a grant from the World Health Organization, Division of Strengthening Health Services, concluded that incorporating trained THPs in PHC programmes can be cost effective in providing essential and culturally relevant health services to communities. The main objective of the study was to evaluate how effective the training projects were and to determine what impacts they might have upon the communities served. A qualitative field evaluation was performed using data collected from project documents, observations, and field interviews with a selection of health agency staff, THPs, and community members. A summary of results is presented from the four field studies. For details refer to the full report.