Background: Research into health and health-care seeking behaviour amongst immigrant populations suggests that culturally-based behaviours change over time towards those prevalent in the host culture. Such acculturation of immigrant groups occurs as part of the interaction of immigrants with mainstream culture. This study examined the acculturation of Ghanaian immigrants in Greater Toronto Area (Canada) focusing particularly on attitudes towards and usage of Ghanaian traditional medicine (TRM).

Concerned with the negative impacts of user fees on healthcare access and utilisation, following the enactment of a law in 2003, the Ghanaian government replaced the 'cash-and-carry' system with a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). Even though many Ghanaians rely on traditional medicine (TRM) for reasons of culture, cost and personal preference, the incipient NHIS does not cover the services of TRM practitioners. Consultations with health policy-makers suggest that, in as much as the government recognises the invaluable contributions of TRM practitioners and would like to incorporate them in the incipient scheme, the provision of TRM in the country is still too disorganised, with few if any formal protocols and codes of conduct. Consequently, the inclusion of TRM practitioners in the NHIS is premature. This scholarly review seeks to bring TRM and its practitioners into the mainstream of healthcare provision in Ghana. Possibilities for medical pluralism in Ghana will be discussed with reference to best practices in countries such as China, India and Vietnam. This paper promotes medical pluralism in the form of Active Collaboration Between Fully Recognised Health Systems where there will be equity, mutual respect and understanding among traditional healers and physicians.

The Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was established as part of a poverty reduction strategy to make health care more affordable to Ghanaians. It is envisaged that it will eventually replace the existing cash-and-carry system. This paper examines the views of NHIS administrators, members/enrollees, and health care providers on how the Scheme operates in practice. It is part of a larger evaluation project on Ghana's NHIS, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Development Network as part of a two-year global research. We rely primarily on qualitative data from focus group discussion in the Brong Ahafo and the Upper East regions respectively. Our findings suggest that the NHIS has improved access to affordable health care services and prescription drugs to many people in Ghana. However, there are concerns about fraud and corruption that must be addressed if the Scheme is to be financially viable.

This commentary draws on sub-Saharan African health researchers’ accounts of their countries’ responses to control the spread of COVID-19, including social and health impacts, home-grown solutions, and gaps in knowledge. Limited human and material resources for infection control and lack of understanding or appreciation by the government of the realities of vulnerable populations have contributed to failed interventions to curb transmission, and further deepened inequalities. Some governments have adapted or limited lockdowns due to the negative impacts on livelihoods and taken specific measures to minimize the impact on the most vulnerable citizens. However, these measures may not reach the majority of the poor. Yet, African countries’ responses to COVID-19 have also included a range of innovations, including diversification of local businesses to produce personal protective equipment, disinfectants, test kits, etc., which may expand domestic manufacturing capabilities and deepen self-reliance. African and high-income governments, donors, non-governmental organizations, and businesses should work to strengthen existing health system capacity and back African-led business. Social scientific understandings of public perceptions, their interactions with COVID-19 control measures, and studies on promising clinical interventions are needed. However, a decolonizing response to COVID-19 must include explicit and meaningful commitments to sharing the power—the authority and resources—to study and endorse solutions.

Traditional medicine (TRM) and traditional healers, embedded within specific thoughts about cosmology, spirituality, and community, occupy a marginal status in African societies like Ghana. Colonialism, the ongoing dominance of the biomedical orientation postindependence, and the encroaching influences of globalization continue to limit the formalization and official recognition of TRM. In this article, we trace the position of TRM from colonial to contemporary times and describe an advocacy initiative, as an enactment of community psychology. The enactment, aimed at promoting and supporting the formal integration of TRM into primary healthcare services in Ghana, resonates with community psychology's accent on social justice, empowerment, collaboration, empirical grounding, and community mobilization. By way of reflections, we elucidate on a few successes and challenges of our advocacy work, and conclude by observing the importance of vigilance and reflexivity in the enactment of community psychology. C 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Within dominant historical and contemporary hierarchical systems of knowledge, indigenous African forms of knowledge are ranked unequally relative to Euro-Western knowledge systems that are defined as normative and universal. For purposes of this article, we accept that indigenous knowledge is "a dynamic archive of the sum total of knowledge, skills and attitudes belonging to and practiced by a community over generations and it