The Concept of Health Care Ethics among the Larteh of Ghana: Implications for Medical Practice in Ghana

Abstract

This research analysed traditional healthcare ethics as perceived by the people of Larteh in Ghana. It is an ethnographic research that studied narratives of health care ethics and analysed their contents. The research attempted to extrapolate unique elements of what might be called the Larteh traditional system of health care ethics, showing their significance for health care in public and private health care centres and hospitals in Ghana. Thus using an ethno-medical approach, generally within the scope of Gyekye’s theory of communalism and Bertalanffy’s general systems theory, the paper argued that though some of the ethical ideas contained in the narratives constitute fragments of ethical behaviour among healers, they largely reflected ethics of health care practice known to Western or Orthodox medical practice such as confidentiality, professionalism, limited non-maleficence and paternalism. Nonetheless, other elements could provide important lessons for improving the care of patients in Ghana. The paper concluded that Larteh’s traditional ideas of health care provide ethical principles that not only preserve the dignity of the patient but also teach principles that can contribute to the development of health care generally. The significance of this paper is in its ability to provide a framework for interpreting traditional healthcare ethics. Keywords: Health care, ethics, indigenous knowledge systems, traditional medicine