Australians turn to traditional healing to cure ailments

Ngangkaris use massaging and bush medicine to treat patients.

Adelaide: Gerard Watson and Margaret Richards are Ngangkari, meaning aboriginal 'healers'. They help people with their 60,000 year-old healing practices combined with western medicine.

This is the first time when Australians have turned to their tradition for healing diseases.

Ngangkaris use massaging and bush medicine to treat patients. A patient named Latrell Branson has found much relief, all thanks to the Ngangkari healing.

"It used to shoot down my legs, I wouldn't be able to move out of bed sometimes. My feet were just throbbing, felt like they had their own heartbeat. All the pain is gone."

Kurt Towers is the Lyell McEwin Hospital's Executive Director of Aboriginal Health.

He says ,"There's been a real want and need from our clinicians in the hospital, and the mental health centre, to want to incorporate traditional beliefs and spiritual care to compliment the mainstream medicine," .

Roslyn Weetra, a 70 year old Narungga (Indigenous Australian) woman sought help from Ngangkari when she was diagnosed with cancer 17 years ago.

"The Aboriginal healing helps you gives you the strength to mend you on the inside while you're going through the chemo treatment and the radiotherapy," she says.

Dr Simon Jenkins, an anaesthetist at the Lyell McEwin Hospital says he believes incorporating the ancient treatment will encourage people to come forward.

"If you don't address the spirit of the Aboriginal people in the healing process then they are far less likely to engage in the healthcare system," he says.

This indigenous method of healing with herbs and prayers is hoped to be replicated around the nation by the aboriginal healers.