Strong idea Cultural Competence
Reference Dialogue: Health and Development: Challenges for the 21st Century

Most doctors who work for health services in African countries, in both the public and private sectors, train at European or American universities. Their learning is defined by Western values at these universities. When they go back to work in their countries of origin, where there is often great cultural and religious diversity, these professionals find it very hard to treat their patients. Concepts of health and sickness vary hugely. For instance, in many African countries smallpox is thought to give superhuman powers to the patient. Moreover, doctors may not understand the dialect spoken where they are posted or take their patients’ customs and beliefs into account.

Therefore, there are cultural barriers that prevent efficient doctor-patient relations: the former are not familiar enough with the local culture, which deters patients from going to health centres.

In light of this, a proposal has been put forward to equip professionals with Cultural Competence in order to make them more aware of the cultural side of sickness/health experiences in their patients. This would be achieved by adding subjects on cultural values to Western university courses in medicine.

The idea is therefore to study multicultural values as part of Western medicine in order to benefit Africa, where cultural and religious diversity is highly complex and there are varied beliefs regarding health and sickness.

Complementary training of this nature would help to pave the way for the necessary dialogue between professional and patient. It would make professionals aware of the culture in which they work and how this may ease or hinder patient recovery.