TRADITIONAL MEDICINE PRACTICE IN AFRICA; A PERSPECTIVE REVIEW
Creators: name: Richard Owusu Nyarko, M.D, Ph.D
name: James Yamoah, Ph.D
name: Roshan Kumar
name: Paul Owusu Boateng, MBBS, M.A.
name: Edward A Boateng, MBChB, MGCS, FWACS
name: Francis Asante, M.A, MPH
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Traditional medicine, herbal, efficacy, cure, ethics.

description: Abstract: 

Introduction: Traditional medicine (TM) occupies a very important place in health care in the world in general, in Africa and Ghana in particular: In Ghana the process to effectively develop TM is in progress due to a favourable integrated environmental, an ongoing national dialogue between stakeholders of traditional medicine and agencies set up by the Government. The Governments of African countries should establish the necessary institutional and financial support to promote the potential role of herbal medicine in primary health care delivery due to their inabilities to fully and efficiently fund orthodox medical systems. A second chance should be given to the development of herbal medicines in standardised scientific processes to support section of the population who voluntarily opt for traditional medicine treatment.  

Methodology: The authors laid much emphasis and reviewed in totality the work done by (Barimah, K. B. & Okyere, B., 2018) on traditional medicine in Ghana. Google scholar, web of science, pub med were used to search for peer reviewed works done on the field of traditional and herbal medicine. In all about 170 articles were sorted and 80 were admitted as extremely useful to the article of the authors

Findings: Despite support from the world health organisation, the various ministries of health of African countries, donor agencies and non-governmental organisations, the  traditional medicine(TM or TRM)  sector is plague with numerous constraints relating to the development of traditional medicine that can be summarised as follows: The lack of institutional support for production and dissemination of key species for cultivation; The low prices paid for traditional medicinal plants by herbal medicine traders and urban herbalists; Lack of appropriate technology for post-harvest and pre-processing purposes adapted productively and effectively; Insufficient documentation and scientific experimentation for verification of the herbalist's claims; Lack of preservation of medicinal extracts for extended shelf life. This findings highly confirm a similar finding in the work of (MINSANTE, 2007; Jiofack et al., 2009)

Conclusion: There has been a tendency in Western medical journals to play down the expertise of African healers by predominantly presenting the iatrogenic risks of their traditional therapies. It cannot be denied, of course, that sometimes there is genuine cause for concern (Stafford et al., 2008).  

The authors agree with the work of ((Noumi, 1984; Ngameni et al 2007) and make emphatic statements that it would be unfair, however, to pass judgement on the biomedical merits of African traditional medicine on the basis of its worst outcomes. Instead, African healing should be considered with a sympathetic eye putting in all rigorous legislations, clinical trials, scientific processes for efficacy before any can be rolled out for public acceptance based on its highly data proven efficacies by regulators.