HomegrownRemedies
Collaboration between TCM and African TM practitioners is possible and will profit both sides. Both medicines are complementary.
Koukouvi Guy Albert Apelete, Chairman, Togolese Traditional Medicine Practitioners’ Association
FOR Samson Soyoye, 2016 was a year of two landmarks. He says his son got married, exiting from the “Bachelors’ Association,” and two batches of students graduated from the African College of Traditional Medicine (TM), the organization he founded in Nigeria’s Ogun State almost two years ago.
Soyoye, who is also president of the Ogun State Traditional Healers’ Association, has started three-month and six-month courses to introduce students to traditional herbal medicine, diagnosis and cure of general as well as hereditary diseases, and how to prepare and administer TM. The 68-year-old, who learned TM from his parents and then honed up his knowledge by attending then National College for Natural Medicine and attending workshops and seminars in other West African countries, outlines the many reasons Africans will continue to use indigenous medicines despite the advent of the Western medicine.
The plus points
“TM has permanent cure of diseases and no side effects,” he said, emphasizing the holistic nature of the system. “It also [non-surgically] controls situations where [Western] doctors would be quick to use operations, like when babies lie in the breech position in their mother’s womb or arresting bleeding after childbirth.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the affordability of TM and a weak distribution system of Western medicine is another important factor for the use of TM. “Most pharmaceuticals in Africa are imported, which significantly increases health expenditure and leaves people vulnerable to interruption of the supply of medicines,” WHO says in a report.
Finally, there is a very strong cultural root that TM continues to enjoy. A study of TM in Tanzania published in 2015 - The Determinants of Traditional Medicine Use in Northern Tanzania: A Mixed-Methods Study - found credibility of traditional practices and strong cultural identities among the five main reasons for the use of TM, including among well-off families and professionals. Wazees - elders - and family members are a primary source of healthcare knowledge. As a 44-year-old woman was quoted in the study, saying, “My family and I prefer not to go to hospitals. My grandparents taught us a lot [especially about plant roots] about healing and curing… My father still will not use any hospital medicines.”
“Many expressed a distinct ‘foreignness’ associated with biomedicines,” the study said. “The doctors of medicine (MDs) agreed with this sentiment. One MD stated, ‘The concept of taking pills on a daily basis is seen as a distinctly Western [American and European] thing,’ and a 53-year-old man went as far as to say, ‘Most of us believe that the Western people came here to undermine us and deter our local medicines. I think that they want to colonize us again.’”
Such perceptions would have been bolstered by efforts in some African countries during colonial governments to ban TM. For instance, in the 1960s, non-allopathic medical colleges were closed in South Africa. The Western media and Hollywood have also played a large role in the demonization of Africa’s TM, creating fables about witchdoctors, voodoo and black magic and deriding the system as unscientific.
Soyoye said only those practitioners who do not know what to do attribute their work to witchcraft. “I have no belief in that,” he said. “We need to have effective TM because of its low cost and [absence] of side effects.” The African College of TM also teaches its students the difference between the practice of TM and occultism.
After the wave of independence in Africa and nations seeking their own pan-African health bodies and laws, West African states signed a protocol in Abuja, Nigeria, in 1987 to found the West African Health Organization (WAHO). WAHO, while seeking “to attain the highest possible standard and protection of health of the peoples in the sub-region through the harmonization of the policies of the member states, pooling of resources, and cooperation,” is also for promoting TM.
An untapped treasure
In 2001, the African Union (AU) Summit in Lusaka, Zambia, declared the period 2001-10 would be observed as “the Decade of African TM” with an action plan drawn for policies and funding. Two years later, August 31 began to be observed annually as African TM Day. In 2011, the AU Conference of African Ministers of Health in Windhoek, Namibia, discussed the end-of-decade review report on African TM and renewed the decade from 2011 to 2020.
However, according to Olajuwon Okubena, co-founder of the Research Institute of Traditional and Alternative Medicine, a Lagos-based NGO, TM is still an informal sector in Africa, especially Nigeria, though it is one of the continent’s biggest economies and home to a wealth of traditional medicinal herbs. “Nigeria is not earning anything from the over $60-billion world trade in herbal medicine. There is no political will to establish and institutionalize TM into the national healthcare system,” said the 74-year-old, whose company, Health Forever, exports natural health products to the United States, Europe and other African countries.
“If properly handled, the revenue generated by TM can rival that from crude oil, as evidenced by the enormous revenue generation of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM),” Okubena added. “Most countries have developed their indigenous TM system to enviable heights. In some instances, such countries have exported their TM knowledge to other countries, thereby earning much-needed foreign exchange.” African TM, he said, while contributing to the wealth of Africa through export earnings, would reduce “the unnecessary expenditure on import of allopathic drugs.” It would also generate “massive employment,” which would contribute to social stability.
In December 2016, the Eighth Scientific Congress of Traditional and Conventional Medicine Practitioners was held in Lomé, Togo, to identify the major challenges African TM continues to face. Besides lack of uniform government policies continent-wide, lack of education and training is another major block. While some countries like Ghana, Burkina Faso and Nigeria have established training programs and university curricula, lack of funds is hampering the work, especially construction of laboratories, which is critical for research. WAHO Deputy Director Laurent Assogba told the congress that his organization is seeking funding for TM practitioners.
“This is where governments need to intervene to provide the needed funds for development as is done in other countries like China,” Okubena said. “Developed countries are now resorting to herbs and natural products but they are not endowed with powerful herbal plants like in Africa. There are numerous African herbs which [can treat diseases] but there is need for research funds to discover them and then commercialize them.”
Olajuwon Okubena (left), founder and Managing Director of Health Forever, in the company’s traditional medicinal herb field in Lagos, Nigeria COURTESY PHOTOATM plus TCM
Koukouvi Guy Albert Apelete, Chairman of the Togolese TM Practitioners’ Association, has been practicing TM since 1945 after learning the skills from his grandfather. Apelete also occasionally uses TCM, which is spreading in Africa, after having found it similar to African TM and effective.
Since March 2012, following the First China-Africa International Cooperation and Development Forum on TCM and Pharmacy in Cape Town, South Africa, there has been greater collaboration between African TM and TCM practitioners. More Africans are receiving institutional training in TCM in China.
“Collaboration between TCM and African TM practitioners is possible and will profit both sides,” Apelete said. “Both medicines are complementary.”
(Reporting from Nigeria, Togo and Beijing)
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