In 2003 we established Bwindi Community Hospital in the town of Buhoma, Uganda, to serve the local people. Seven years later there had been bright spots, but there were still so many deaths from malaria, needy patients coming too late to the hospital, people failing to complete drug-treatment regimens.

I had been reluctant for years to engage with a segment of the local healing community, the abafumu, practitioners of traditional medicine. They were highly respected by all – except me. Their approach to healing is so vastly different from my Western approach that I believed working with them was impossible.

Then a fellow doctor told me: “You believe you cannot work with them; in reality, you can’t work without them.”