African Traditional Medicine: Autonomy and Informed Consent

This book focuses on informed consent in African Traditional Medicine (ATM). ATM forms a large portion of the healthcare systems in Africa. WHO statistics show that as much as 80% of the population in Africa uses traditional medicine for primary health care. With such a large constituency, it follows that ATM and its practices should receive more attention in bioethics.By comparing the ethics of care approach with the ATM approach to Relational Autonomy In Consent (RAIC), the authorsargue that the ATM focus on consent based on consensus constitutes a legitimate informed consent. This bookis distinctive insofar as it employs the ethics of care as a hermeneutic to interpret ATM. The analysis examines the ethics of care movement in Western bioethics to explore its relational approach to informed consent.Additionally,thisis the first known study that discusses healthcare ethics committees in ATM.