Contemporary Integration of Spirituality and Health Care Delivery: An Indo-Caribbean Case Perspective Referencing an Islamic Influenced Healing Therapy

An explanatory hypothesis regarding resistance to dam karna practice, an Islamic influenced healing therapy, gaining acceptance as a supplemental treatment in the healthcare delivery system in the English speaking Caribbean countries. Medical anthropology work in the last 50 years have led North American medical circles and health care delivery systems to recognize and accommodate at different levels the idea that meaning and management of illness occur within ethnic, socioeconomic, political and cognitive matrix. Given the close geographical proximity to North America with the medical education affinities of the two regions how then is the resistance to dam karna to be explained? How did the expression for the practice come to gain currency in the vernacular of the Caribbean people and its diaspora? What are the distinctive features of the practice, especially ones tying it to Islamic lore? These questions are considered as part of the explanation and examples offered of the growing body of reputable medical literature and of praxis coming to recognized illness as not just biological and of systematic studies describing theoretical models that would account for religious factors influencing physical health and well-being. The underlying argument of the paper implicates a shift in the definition of religion during colonial period in the Caribbean region, and that shift or (mis)understanding of religion has been a humbug to recognition of traditional healing therapies as viable possibilities in a national health care delivery system.