- A team of doctors, psychiatrists, and anthropologists
have reached a remote Miskito community in the jungles of northern Nicaragua
where 60 people are suffering from a mysterious "collective madness".
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- The outbreak of the malady, known as grisi siknis in
the local Miskut language, began in the Raiti community near the Honduran
border a month ago. Seven cases were reported in neighbouring Namahka last
week, where one 15-year-old girl is said to have died.
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- Other cases have appeared in three other nearby communities.
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- In all cases, the patients have the same symptoms: long
periods of coma-like unconsciousness, interrupted by sudden bouts of frenzied
behaviour.
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- During the attacks, sufferers attempt to flee their communities
with their eyes closed, seizing any weapon they can find with which they
appear to try to defend themselves against invisible attackers.
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- According to local press reports, they have extraordinary
strength and often four people are required to restrain them.
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- Community leaders in Raiti claim the outbreak of grisi
siknis is the result of a curse. In Namahka, the seven affected are all
girls aged 14 to 18. Unconfirmed reports say the girl who died was Isabel
Wislop. She fled across the Coco river into Honduras, reaching the village
of Panzap where she died.
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- The Nicaraguan government sent a medical team to Raiti
including anthropologists and traditional healers.
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- The Nicaraguan health minister, JosÈ Antonio Alvarado,
said the Miskito healers sent to Raiti were getting better results than
those trained in western medicine.
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- "If [the affected] are given anti-convulsive drugs
or anti-depressants there is no improvement, but if they are given remedies
by the healer they feel better," he said.
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- The medical team has taken samples of water from local
wells and recommended that people only drink coconut juice until they have
tested the supply.
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- Mr Alvarado said a medical report carried out in the
late 1950s after a similar outbreak concluded that deliberate contamination
of wells was one possible cause. "There are citizens that put hallucinogenic
substances in the well water that when combined with the anthropological
aspects [of the disease] can exacerbate people's behaviour."
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- The medical team is being led by Florence Levy, the region's
health director.
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- She said there was no indication that a virus was responsible,
but many different tests were being carried out.
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- Dr Levy confirmed that the Miskito healers were leading
the fight to bring the outbreak under control.
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- "There's not much our doctors can do; we are giving
support to the healers as they know the problem better than us," she
said.
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- "The population doesn't make use of [the Nicaraguan
health service], because the illness is more spiritual than physical, so
they turn to the healer for the spiritual part."
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- The last major outbreak of grisi siknis began in 1910
and affected dozens of Miskito communities throughout the region for 20
years.
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- It is estimated that some 25,000 people live in the Miskito
communities on the banks or the Coco river.
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- Three years ago about 80 people were affected in the
community of Krin Krin. Many were successfully treated by a healer, Carlos
Salomon Taylor, who is part of the team now working in Raiti.
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- Mr Taylor is said to have demanded - and received - more
than $700 from the health ministry for his services. He claims that his
treatment, which involves local plants and ancestral rituals, cures most
sufferers in 15 to 30 days.
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- Mr Taylor is one of five healers sent to Raiti, where
25 of the 60 sufferers are said to be responding well to treatment.
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- Grisi siknis has been the subject of anthropological
studies and is defined as a culture-specific malady found only in the Miskito
culture, although with many similarities to pibloktoq, or "arctic
hysteria", found in indigenous peoples of Greenland.
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- "Western health care people have often been sceptical
of these attacks, labelling them 'mass hysteria', or simply 'those crazy-acting
Miskito people'," said Professor Phil Dennis, an anthropologist at
Texas Tech University who spent two years studying the phenomenon in the
late 1970s. He says the attacks are very serious to those experiencing
them and their families, and often to entire Miskito communities. He witnessed
four attacks during his research and said the patients were "clearly
in another state of reality".
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- According to Prof Dennis, grisi siknis is a "culture-bound
syndrome" unique to the Miskito, comparable to anorexia nervosa which
is known only in the affluent west. "The culture-bound syndromes force
us to realize that health and disease are not simple biological matters,
but a complex interweaving of various aspects of being human. Grisi siknis
is a very serious health problem for Miskito people."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1108463,00.html
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