In Tanzania’s Zanzibar region, traditional healers are being registered by authorities keen to regulate the practitioners who treat everything from depression to hernias.
About 340 healers have been registered with their toolkits of herbs, holy scriptures and messages, in accordance with the region’s Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act passed in 2009.
There are an estimated 2,000 more healers, or mgangas, hoping to register, said Hassan Combo, the government registrar at the council that records them.