Traditional or folk medicine in the perspective of national development

Traditional medicine arouses various reactions in Suriname. Suriname has different ethnic groups, which were historically in an inferior position. Their traditional values and norms were regarded as inferior and were never formally recognised. In the beginning of the 20th century many of the locally trained people typified traditional medicine as `backward and primitive', but nowadays the population often uses traditional cures in case of illness, when modern western medicine fails to help. Sometimes they use both the traditional and the modern medicines and therefore it seems that national development, especially in the case of medicine, will benefit from the available knowledge from both sides