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The role of the medical herbalist in ghana

 

 

Health is a basic fundamental right of man and also a prerequisite to normal human and national development. To this end, governments devote larger proportion of their budgets to healthcare delivery.

 

In Ghana, two main healthcare systems are practiced: Traditional medicine and conventional or allopathic medicine. The latter system though foreign and comparatively of recent introduction does receive by far a greater percentage of the health care budget although it caters for only about 30% of the country's population. The majority of the populations which according to the world health organization is between 70-90% depend on traditional medicine for their primary healthcare needs.

 

The WHO having recognized the deficiencies in the healthcare systems operating in most developing countries adopted the Alma Ata 1978 declaration of ‘health for all by 2000' as a policy statement and urged member states to adapt policies for the utilization of traditional healthcare in public healthcare programmes. This, in Ghana will, allow the ‘normalizing' of the ratio of medical doctor population of presently at 1:20,000 to 1:10,000 as reflected by government policy. Currently, certain factors militate against achieving this target.

 

In order to enhance the health status of the population, it is important to look to another system which for Ghana happens to be Herbal Medicine-part of our medical heritage which though available nationally and is properly developed but has not been integrated into the formal healthcare system.

 

Herbal medicine refers to the use of medicinal plants for its therapeutic purposes.

 

There is a degree program in Herbal Medicine at KNUST. The goal of the programme is primarily to train personnel who are knowledgeable in the basic sciences, medical, pharmaceutical and social sciences to be competent to practice as health professionals using available facilities to deliver acceptable and safe healthcare. Some of the courses done are: clinical medicine, diagnostic skills, human anatomy and physiology, chemical pathology, pharmacology etc.

 

In the past, modern science has considered methods of traditional knowledge as primitive and during the colonial era traditional medical practices were often declared as illegal by the colonial authorities.

 

Consequently doctors and health personnel have in most cases continued to shun traditional practitioners despite their contribution to meeting the basic health needs of the population, especially the rural people in developing countries.

 

However, recent progress in the fields of environmental sciences,  immunology, medical botany and pharmacognosy have led researchers to appreciate in a new way the precise descriptive capacity and rationality of various traditional taxonomies as well as the effectiveness of the treatments employed.

 

Developing countries have begun to realize that their current health systems are dependent upon technologies and imported medicine that end up being expensive and whose supply is erratic.

 

Relegated for a long time to a marginal place in the health planning of developing countries, herbal medicine or more appropriately, herbal medical systems of health care have undergone a major revival in the last ten years.

 

Every region has had, at one time in its history, a form of traditional medicine. We can therefore talk of Chinese traditional medicine, Arabic traditional medicine or African traditional medicine.

 

This medicine is traditional because it is deeply rooted in a specific socio-cultural context, which varies from one community to another. Each community has its own particular approach to health and disease even at the level of ethnopathogenic perceptions of diseases and therapeutic behaviour.

 

In this respect, we can argue that there are as many traditional medicines as there are communities. This gives traditional medicine its diverse and pluralist nature.

 

Traditional medicine has been described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as one of the surest means to achieve total health care coverage of the world's population.

 

In spite of the marginalisation of traditional medicine practised in the past, the attention currently given by governments to widespread health care application has given a new drive to research, investments and design of programmes in this field in several developing countries.

 

The new Medical Herbalist who is technically and analytically based as his orthodox counterpart and takes a holistic approach to manage patients should be involved and integrated into the national healthcare delivery systems.

 

The main role of the Medical Herbalist would be in the diagnosis and management of diseases using herbal medicines.

 

The Medical Herbalist can also help in the monitoring and evaluation of herbal medicines claimed to be effective and safe for clinical and scientific investigation, education, training and exchange of information.

 

 

About the Author

(MEDICAL HERBALIST)

I HAVE A DEGREE IN HERBAL MEDICINE FROM THE KWAME NKRUMAH UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, KUMASI-GHANA.

I HAVE BEEN PRACTICING HERBAL MEDICINE FOR ABOUT 5 YEARS NOW.I AM WITH THE MINIST

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