African Traditional Medicine: Autonomy and Informed Consent

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African Traditional Medicine: Autonomy and Informed Consent is written by Peter Ikechukwu Osuji and published by Springer. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 3319058916 (ISBN 10) and 9783319058917 (ISBN 13).

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 authors argue that the ATM focus on consent based on consensus constitutes a legitimate informed consent. This book is 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, this is the first known study that discusses healthcare ethics committees in ATM.