Under the impact of state-sponsored socio-economic development programmes traditional cultures of tribal communities have been undergoing some change. Some of them are becoming literate; some others are becoming politically conscious and taking to salaried jobs. Both in the organized sector as well as in the unorganized sector. Some of them have managed to move above the poverty line by acquiring productive assets or education. But a great majority of tribal population in the state of Orissa is still poverty. The popular political slogan: “education for all, health care facilities for all. Safe drinking water for all, communication facility to all the panchayat headquarters in the country and more edible oil for the country (raising per capita consumption) still sounds hollow.
Health is a very important socio-biological asset of everybody. In order to provide modern care services to the tribal population Primary Health Centers, Dispensaries a small hospitals have been established in tribal areas, but the type of health care facilities they provide are not satisfactory. Doctors rarely stay at their official headquarters, as tribal areas are not professionally congenial for them. Health institutions in most of the tribal areas are understaffed. Medicines are not available in these institutions, and the attitude of health personnel towards innocent tribal patients is crude and curt. Under these pathetic conditions primary health care services do not reach a majority of tribal population. Consequently, quacks, touts and medical mafias are indulging in drug-peddling, sale of spurious patent medicines and in fake treatment of diseases. The situation is indeed painful and appalling. Tribal people are eager to use modern allopathic medicines for their quick results. Under this sort of social compulsions a new system should be a particularly one, where the tribal, their ethnic healers and their ethno-medicines be involved to increase efficiency in the health sector.
Medical science recognizes that there are three levels of treatment as ailments or sicknesses are classified into: (i) minor (ii) medium and (iii) major depending on he gravity of suffering of patient. Trained health workers can attend to minor aliments; the second category of sickness can be handled by services of specialist physicians/surgeons. If the literate shamans shamanins and tribal medicinemen are imparted training in primary health care services, then they can serve the tribal people better and the present unwanted scene can be obviated at. This sort of participatory development programmed will yield concrete and quick results and it will be sustainable. It is time for identification and conservation of ethno-medicinal plants. There is a tendency to over-exploit the herbal medicines. Consequently these are dwindling and some have become extinct.
In India all round development of masses is next to impossible. On the one hand. India’s population size is huge, and on the either, the resource position is precarious. Therefore, all efforts are to be generating indigenous resources for the development of general masses in all sectors. With per capita income and literacy being low, and in view of acute paucity of resources, tribal, rural and urban-slum population, by and large, are in a disadvantageous position. Birth rate being 30.2 in 1989 is very high. Due to malnourishment diseases and lack of access to safe drinking water supply (77.0 percent), the qualityof population is bound to be poor. Access to modern medical institutions, doctors and paramedical staff, all combined together, cannot cater to the volume of basic health services of the people of the state of Orissa. Therefore, trible and rural people continue of repose confidence on their traditional systems of medicine and medicine men even after more than fifty year of our independence.
In view of this stupendous problem it is desirable and necessary to train up the ethnic and traditional medicine men in fundamental allopathic systems of treatment for rendering better health care services to common masses. This sort of health care services will be participatory and sustainable in the long run.
