Rehabilitating traditional indigeneous healing strategies and fulfilling the right to health in the democratic republic of the congo

Colonialism has established a conventional health care system (CHCS) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and has fought against preexisting indigenous healing strategies. Paradoxically, post-independence governments have initially continued to exclusively cater to the needs of the CHCS despite its widely recognized ineffectiveness in achieving universal, geographic, financial and cultural accessibility and despite the fact that a great number of Congolese still regularly resort to the non-conventional medicines (NCMs) for their healing exclusively or concomitantly with CHCS. Slowly, the post-independence governments have deployed efforts aimed at promoting NCMs. The nature, patterns, correlates and effectiveness of their initiatives are not well known, yet they are worthy of exploration and support in this era of globalization where NCMs are increasingly lauded for their marked availability, accessibility, and acceptability. This study reviews NCMs-related initiatives by post-independence governments and other contemporaneous health care decision-makers in the DRC, identifies the enabling, facilitating and limiting factors in the promotion of NCMs, and proposes some key elements of a national policy to effectively rehabilitate NCMs and fulfill the rights to health. To reach these objectives, we use the documentary analysis and the violation of rights approaches, hence bringing into light the potential and real risks of violations of the rights of the stakeholders of NCMs. Based on the positive features of NCMs in the realization of the rights to health, we propose a new Congolese policy framework for promoting NCMs and satisfying the health rights of those still left out of the reach of the CHCS.