Northeast Amazon

Health Provision in the Remote Interior of Suriname

Trio Village of Kwamalasamutu, Suriname

Challenges of health delivery to remote Amazonian tribes are shared with many other indigenous populations worldwide, including but not limited to remote location, non-nucleated settlement patterns, lack of economic capacity, cultural and linguistic barriers. Health programs and personnel sometimes demonstrate a lack of cultural sensitivity as well as a disregard for indigenous practices based on ethnocentric preconceptions. The adoption by health organizations of programs that recognize and operate inclusive of tribal perceptions of health and disease, traditional settlement patterns, and intrinsic medical systems is urgently needed.

Medische Zending Suriname, a Surinamese secular non-governmental organization, is responsible for providing primary health care services and operates health outposts distributed throughout the Suriname interior. The health outposts are staffed by well-trained healthcare providers who mostly originate from the indigenous communities they serve. Four Surinamese physicians circulate through the health outposts on an established schedule.

In the course of working with indigenous peoples, Medische Zending physicians and indigenous health workers have observed that patients often respond well to traditional medicine, and that certain tribal remedies are apparently more efficacious than the pharmaceutical interventions and therapies they can provide. Moreover, such treatments are cost-effective and place a greater responsibility into the hands of indigenous communities for their own healthcare. For these reasons, the Medische Zending is seeking to better understand indigenous medicine by forming a close cooperation of trust and openness with the traditional healers of these tribes and share in the responsibility of delivering healthcare to the villages.