Why we must provide treatment information

Sipho Mthathi

South Africa

I may have a different theory of ill health than the germ theory. In the rural areas, there is often a very different understanding of ill health. What do you say when people say, “I don’t have a virus, I have been bewitched”?

How do you integrate other belief systems to promote the understanding you want to promote? If I don’t understand germ theory, how can I even understand what you are saying? How do you start from where people are?

This web presentation is based on a book with photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans. It follows a global meeting held in Cape Town in 2006 organised by the Treatment Action Campaign, South Africa and i-Base, England.