3 July 2012 Last updated at 21:25 ET By Irene Caselli Riobamba, Ecuador

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Patient Jenny Layedra and yachak Mariano Atupana talk about the importance of indigenous treatments

Dressed in a red poncho and traditional hat, Mariano Atupana stands out among the medical staff at the hospital in the Ecuadorean town of Riobamba.

But it is not just his dress that makes him different.

Mr Atupana is a yachak, a medicine man, who uses burning candles and egg yolks to help diagnose ailments.

Yachaks normally see patients in villages in Ecuador's Andes mountains.

But Mr Atupana examines them in a room at Riobamba's Alternative Andean Hospital - a private institution where Western and Andean medicine are practised side by side.

This hospital is one of a number of pioneering projects in Ecuador which are bringing together different types of healthcare.

Patient Jenny Layedra, 44, has come to the hospital because she has been feeling physically weak and tired, and suffering with headaches.

Read more from the original source:

Ecuador's mix of folk and modern medicine