This article examines ethnomedical knowledge and practices related to tuberculosis conceptualization and management in a rural southern Ethiopian community. An adult health-status survey, administered to 217 adults selected through quota sampling procedures, investigated prevailing nosological structures. Additionally, disease-enhancing behaviors were identified through qualitative-research methods. The findings show that while symptomatological concepts coincide with biomedicine, the local etiological model postulates empirically based causational factors unrelated to tubercle bacilli. Therapeutic preference hinges on the utilization of ethnobotanical remedies and their expected emetic effects. The relevance of tuberculosis-related ethnomedical knowledge and management practices is discussed in relation to primary health care and disease-control programs in Ethiopia. It is recommended that health-education interventions, illustrating the nature and transmission avenues of tuberculosis and the effects of biomedical therapies, precede and/or accompany vaccination campaigns or chemotherapy. Teaching materials should valorize existing ethnomedical notions that emphasize contagion as an avenue of disease transmission, and the importance of nutritional adequacy in fighting the disease.

It has been widely recognized that worldwide efforts to eradicate malaria have generally failed because they were largely based on biotechnological interventions while neglecting the human factor. WHO's Primary Health Care orientation emphasized the importance of situating disease eradication programs within the context of the medical beliefs, values, and needs of the target community. This study presents the results of a survey conducted in a rural Southern Ethiopian community on malaria-related beliefs and practices. The findings show that ethnomedical beliefs prevailed in the causational conceptualization of the disease. The majority of the respondents failed to acknowledge the Anopheline mosquitoes as a potential source of ill-health. This lack of vector awareness is discussed in relation to the need for community health education programs. Various organizational and infrastructural innovations introduced by the 1974 Ethiopian Socialist Revolution could be successfully utilized to disseminate basic medical information concerning the malaria cycle and to raise community participation in eradication programs.

This article examines patterns of continuity and change in spirit possession phenomena among the Sidamo of southern Ethiopia. Traditional possession rituals appear to be losing cultural relevance, owing to the increasing popularity of possession and exorcistic healing enacted within the ritual context of independent religious movements. Such movements emerged in the region as a response to widespread conversion to Christianity and Islam in the 1950s and 1960s. Patterns of possession healing in the new cults are analysed in relation to the prevailing holistic definition of health and the role attributed to supernatural agents i n illness aetiology. While outlining points of convergence and divergence in the recodification of rituals, this article highlights their therapeutic objectives and the centrality of healing in the newly emerged cults. It is argued that the political and sex antagonism model proposed by ‘deprivation theories’ is inadequate to explain the changing modalities of spirit possession and its persistence on the African scene. Independent healing movements should be recognised as an important health resource where rural and urban Africans seek relief from a wide range of organic and mental illnesses, personal misfortunes, and stressful life situations.

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