As I am researching traditional approaches to women’s health in Nicaragua for my final project, I am particularly interested in the integration of traditional methods and biomedicine. According to Carrie, Mackey, and Laird, in 2007, 143 member states adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) reflecting widespread recognition by the international community to the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples. UNDRIP Article 24 affirms the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples to their traditional medicines and health practices, and to all social and health services. While legislation has clearly been enacted recognizing the importance of such integration, biomedical providers often have an advantage over traditional healers in their authority and use of treatments. In a 2009 study, traditional medicine care was primarily used at the discretion of biomedical health care providers as part of their own therapeutic treatment or alternatively by a traditional healer called in only to care for those who suffered with ailments outside of the general scope of biomedicine. Hence, such healers (who specifically belonged to the Miskitu ethnic group) were used as a marginalized complement mostly when biomedicine failed.

Research suggests that it’s important integrate traditional medicine and modern medicine– not only from a cultural perspective– but also to address broader public health and patient safety concerns that may arise from uncoordinated use,  such as abuse, overdose, toxicity or poison risk, and potential for adverse events. Possible solutions to this issue include employing doctors of Miskitu descent (or some other indigenous group familiar with traditional practices), or implementing institutions like Casas Maternas, which bring professional healthcare resources and technology to rural communities on a non-intrusive scale.