Dr. Edward Green, health and policy analyst, said he applied anthropology to treating AIDS and STDs in Africa, and because of this, the rate of STDs has gone down.

Green spoke about his experience and the programs he implemented Thursday night in the Memorial Union as part of a speech: “Bridging the Gap Between Traditional Healing and Modern Medicine: An AIDS program in Africa.”

Green, who owns a consulting firm, became interested in doing something about the wide spread problem of AIDS and STDs in Africa after learning of Michael Warren’s, ISU anthropology professor and director of Center of Indigenous Knowledge and Rural Development, work.

Common healers in Africa are traditional healers and herbalists, Green said.

Traditional healers call upon spiritual powers to cure the ailment of the person and herbalists create various mixtures of herbs to cure the person, and many studies have shown that the herbs really work, Green said.

An important factor in alleviating AIDS and STDs was to determine what the indigenous people think of the them, how they are contracted and how to prevent STDs and AIDS, Green said.

Pre-tests and post-tests were given to ascertain the knowledge the indigenous people and the traditional healers had, and much improvement was shown in the post-tests, he said.

Green said the traditional healers were taught how to put on condoms, how AIDS is transmitted and how they can take precautions to prevent AIDS.

We went in “to teach them our methods of prevention,” Green said.

A pattern of AIDS transmission reveals that in “pattern I” countries, such as industrial countries with a high HIV prevalence, male to male transmission and intravenous drug use are the two most common means of transmission, and in “pattern II” countries, such as Africa, male to female transmission makes up 90 to 93 percent of the means of transmission, he said.

“This is a very different pattern of transmission, and we asked why there is so much heterosexually transmitted AIDS in Africa, and yet so little in ‘pattern I’ countries,” Green said.

It was found that the prevalence of AIDS in Africa is related to STDs and that “STDs is known to facilitate the transmission of HIV,” he said.

When the STDs in Africa were targeted, about 45 percent less cases were then found, Green said.

Green said the proposed theory of illness-causation in southern Africa were ancestors, spirits, god, witchcraft, sorcery and natural causation.

“We wanted to encourage, reinforce the belief that sexual intercourse can be a health hazard, especially if with many partners; with strangers; outside of marriage; notions of sexual morality and infidelity,” Green said.

People are changing their behavior, but they are still not using condoms, Green said. The amount of cases of STDs have gone down in Uganda and Zambia, but the reason has not fully been determined, he added.