The decision to collaborate followed a seminar last week in the US, hosted by the IK programme, at which delegates from US complementary and alternative health centres heard presentations from the Tanga AIDS Working Group (TAWG), Tanzania, and the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Agricultural By-Products (CIKSAP), Kenya, on their approaches to health care based on indigenous knowledge. Government leaders and civil society groups called for learning from local communities at the First Global Knowledge Conference in 1997 in Toronto, Canada. Following that conference, the IK programme was launched and now supports local communities, NGOs and governments seeking to integrate traditional health and agricultural practices into development activities. [for the IK programme website, go to: http://www.worldbank.org/afr/ik/index.htm] According to the World Bank, the programme has helped identify and disseminate details of more than 200 cases where indigenous knowledge has played a role in solving local development problems. In and around the port city of Tanga, Tanzania's second most important port after Dar Es Salaam, TAWG has treated over 2,000 AIDS patients with herbs prescribed by traditional healers. And in Kenya, CIKSAP has facilitated an exchange between local communities of Maasai pastoralists and Luo farmers on medicinal and food plants. "We are trying to learn how local communities are solving daily development problems," said Nicolas Gorjestani, head of the World Bank's IK programme. "We think this is important for us for three basic reasons: First, it solves development problems and has impact. Second, we would like to play the role of a broker in the increasingly interrelated, interconnected learning society and knowledge economy... The third reason is that it helps us to respond better to the requests and to the calls from civil society groups." The gains to be achieved are diverse, and often powerful. Health workers in Iganga District, southeastern Uganda, used indigenous knowledge systems to help reduce maternal mortality rates by 50 percent within three years, according to the World Bank statement. Meanwhile, women in the village of Malicounda, Senegal, led a local movement which stopped female genital cutting in 200 communities within four years. In Tanzania, the impact of TAWG had been most significant in alleviating some opportunistic infections caused by HIV/AIDS. Some patients treated using indigenous knowledge have lived longer by up to five years, according to the World Bank statement. In Tanga regional hospital, TAWG traditional healers and medical doctors work closely together, testing patients for HIV, treating them and providing counselling. TAWG has set up an information centre for AIDS education. The group also provides home care for people living with AIDS. To replicate the success of the group, the World Bank is supporting exchanges with other communities in East Africa. In Uganda, a national workshop resulted in the 1999 Kampala Declaration on indigenous knowledge for sustainable development. The Bank provided a grant from the Institutional Development Fund (IDF) to support activities to help integrate IK into the operations of health and agriculture ministries, to build local capacity to document and exchange indigenous knowledge. In Kenya, the IK programme is sponsoring an exchange between Maasai herders and Luo farmers. A Maasai community in the Ngong Hills [24 km southwest of the capital, Nairobi] created a museum in their village to educate their youth and preserve the local material culture and language. The community has also set up a project to conserve local trees and document their medicinal properties. The CIKSAP has been facilitating the exchange of information and experience between these two communities on the development and marketing of indigenous medicinal and food products. The US meeting last week was "just the beginning of a process", said Nicolas Gorjestani. "We have succeeded in bringing together and brokering a cooperation between development practitioners in the field, the scientific community and World Bank to come together and begin looking at the process of validation of some of these traditional practices." "We need to learn from local communities to enrich the development process," World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn added. [ENDS] [IRIN-CEA: Tel: +254 2 622147 Fax: +254 2 622129 e-mail: irin-cea@ocha.unon.org ] [This item is delivered in the "africa-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial sites requires written IRIN permission.] Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2001