This week I read another article about islands out in the Pacific Ocean. This time, the article that I read focuses specifically on on the Tonga Islands, which are an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean south of Samoa, also known as the Friendly Islands. Tonga is made up of 176 islands, 36 of them are inhabited. The article that I read focuses on the health care system of the islands. Tonga serves as example of enduring medical pluralism which incorporates traditional medical practice and Western medical practice, while accommodating contemporary political and social change. Western formal medicine is represented by the hospitals and the community health centers, and traditional, native medicine is practiced in homes healers. Both types of therapies are popularly used for different ailments or for the same problem at different points in the illness.
This coexistence of medical traditions is very common throughout the world, Tonga is just seen as a very clear example of this cooperation. In the United States many old world treatments are no longer seen as valid, but the people in Tonga continue to use many of these treatments because they seem to ease the pain of illnesses and give the people more peace of mind.
The main reason that the traditional and modern treatments coexist so well in Tonga is that there is no real organized health care system on the islands, so people just try a variety of treatments until one works. This seems to work for the people on the islands because they do not have the money to create an organized health care system.
I found this article to be interesting because there are many things about the Tongan health care ideas that are so different than ours in the United States, and there are some that are extremely similar. The Tongan system is like health care in the Untied States in the 1700's mixed with the latest and greatest biomedical advances, all at one time. 
I notice stuff like this whenever I talk to elderly people, because they always seem to have cures for ailments that seem off the wall. I can be talking to my grandmother and say I don't feel good. She will usually say that I need to do this or that and it will go away, and all I'm thinking is that there is not way that would help any, but if it lets people think that it is working, than a placebo is just as good as anything else
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