Health System, Sickness and Social Suffering in Mekelle (Tigray - Ethiopia)

In medical anthropology "medical system" refers to all the healing practices, therapeutic knowledge and traditions that in a specific social context people can use in order to cope with health problems. It refers as well to all the social actors involved: health professionals, healers, priests, patients and their kin, as well as policy makers.

Starting from this perspective, this book presents the first results of an ethnographic research, which the authors carried out in Tigray between 2007 and 2008. It analyses, in the social context of Mekelle - the capital town of Tigray -, the different healing practices and therapeutic traditions, as well as the strategies of the actors acting in the social arena. It also explores the traditional nosologies, and the health care seeking behaviours of the patients in a context characterised by social suffering and inequalities.