“The largest public hospital in Osorno [Chile] is finding new ways to incorporate Indigenous health care practices, such as having a machi help with delivery.” G. Dell’orto, ICT, August 19, 2022
Ana Maria Aucapan, left, a Mapuche machi, or spiritual guide, and Ingrid Naipallan, second left, perform Indigenous rites with a percussion instrument called a kultrun as Angela Quintana Aucapan begins her labor accompanied by her partner Cristian Fernandez Ancapan at the San Jose de Osorno Base Hospital in Osorno, Chile, Friday, Aug. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Luis Hidalgo)
Excerpt:New ways to incorporate Indigenous medicine, By Giovanna Dell’orto,Associated Press, ICT, August 29, 2022
“In labor with her first child last month, Lucia Hernández Rumian danced around her hospital room while her husband played the kultrun, a ritual drum.
She turned down pain medication from the hospital’s staff to get massages and oil rubdowns instead from her cultural liaison, who had ceremonially purified the space according to Mapuche customs.’It became my own space,’ Hernández said.
The largest public hospital in the southern Chilean city of Osorno is finding new ways to incorporate these and other Indigenous health care practices. There’s a special delivery room with Native images on the walls and bed, forms for doctors to approve herbal treatments from trusted traditional healers, and protocols for ‘good dying’ mindful of spiritual beliefs…But they also restore a crucial spiritual component to health care, according to health professionals and patients at Hospital Base San José de Osorno.
Mapuche people account for one-third of Osorno’s inhabitants and eight of 10 in the adjacent province of San Juan de la Costa
‘It must be a guarantee – we take charge of the physical part, but without transgressing on the spiritual dimension,’ said Cristina Muñoz, the certified nurse-midwife who launched new delivery protocols that Indigenous pregnant women can customize and are believed to be the first in the country…To join both kinds of medicine is not easy. Many Indigenous people perceive public hospitals as yet another state institution that discriminates against their beliefs…But doctors and traditional healers say they can complement one another’s work by realizing that every expert only knows a fraction of what’s possible, especially when battling new diseases like COVID-19.”
QUEEN ELIZABETH II HAS WALKED ON… SEPTEMBER 8, 2022
“Queen Elizabeth II, the UK’s longest-serving monarch, has died at Balmoral aged 96, after reigning for 70 years.
She died peacefully on Thursday afternoon at her Scottish estate, where she had spent much of the summer.
The Queen came to the throne in 1952 and witnessed enormous social change.
Her son King Charles III said the death of his beloved mother was a “moment of great sadness” for him and his family and that her loss would be “deeply felt” around the world.
He said: “We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished sovereign and a much-loved mother.” BBC
(April 21, 1926 – September 8, 2022)
