THIS week we look at how effective African medicine is in different African communities.
In Africa about 70 percent of the populations depend primarily on traditional medicine to treat a variety of ailments.
In some instances, patients use the medicine simultaneously with modern medicine in order to alleviate sufferings associated with disease and illness.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has acknowledged the contributions of traditional healers to the overall health delivery particularly in developing countries.
According to WHO, the ‘native healers’ have contributed to a broad spectrum of health care needs that include disease prevention, management and treatment of non-communicable diseases as well as mental and gerontological health problems.
There are also increasing evidences that traditional medicine is effective in the management of chronic illnesses
A number of factors have been identified as responsible for the widespread use of traditional medicine and the sudden concern for assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of the medicine across the world.
Research has also shown that a number of traditional medicines are important and effective curative regimens in the management of a wide spectrum of diseases some of which may not be effectively managed using Western medicines.
Medicinal values of insects have also been documented in Zimbabwe.
It was found that some insects, such as Harurwa or stink bugs, locusts and black ants when combined with other ingredients, can be used for spiritual protection, preparation of love medicine, management of the eye and ear problems, as well as prevention and control of convulsions in children.
In the same vein, arthropods are reportedly used to cure thunderbolt, child delivery, bedwetting, yellow fever and a host of many other ailments that can not be treated using Western medicines and therapy.
Furthermore, inadequate accessibility to modern medicines and drugs to treat and manage certain diseases in Africa contributed to the widespread use of traditional medicines.
In a recent study by the WHO and Health Action International (HAI) in 36 low and middle-income countries, modern drugs were reportedly way beyond the reach of large sections of the populations.
Therefore, the widespread use of traditional medicines in Africa can be attributed to its accessibility.
The majority of medical doctors available in Africa are concentrated in urban areas and cities at the expense of rural areas.
Therefore, for millions of people in rural areas, native healers remain their health providers.
Besides accessibility to traditional healers, traditional medicine provides an avenue through which cultural heritage is preserved and respected.
This practice is in line with the socio-cultural and environmental conditions of the people who use it in Africa.
In developed countries, on the other hand, factors responsible for the widespread use of traditional medicines are beyond accessibility, affordability and cultural compatibility.
According to the WHO anxiety about the undesirable effects of chemical drugs, improved access to health information, changing values and reduced tolerance of paternalism are some of the factors responsible for the growing demand for modern medicines and antibiotics in developed countries.
Similarly, increase in reported cases of chronic diseases, especially in developed countries has been attributed to the growing use of these modern medicines.
Although modern treatments are widely available to deal with these ailments, some patients are convinced that they have not provided satisfactory results, hence, the need for alternative or complementary measures.
According to research it appears that people with chronic illness comfortably reconcile the potential benefits of remedies and practices whose foundations derive from radically different worldviews and understandings of human health and illness processes.
Thus, the economic advantages of traditional medicines have been outstanding and these have been reported and documented.
Following the growing demand for these traditional medicines and the contributions of the medicine to the overall health delivery system particularly in Africa, some researchers have suggested that traditional medical system be integrated into the mainstream of health care services to improve accessibility to health care.
In the same vein, the resolution made at the Regional Committee for Africa, in 2000, recognised the potential of traditional medicine for the achievement of universal health coverage in the African region and suggested accelerated development of local production, consequently, the publication of methodologies on research and evaluation of traditional medicine by the WHO and guidelines for assessing the quality of herbal medicines with reference to contaminants and residue were to ensure that people have adequate access to the kinds of information required for effective use of traditional medicines and appropriate methodology to be adopted by member states in their effort to integrate the traditional medicine into the mainstream of health care system.
However, there are certain problems and challenges to be overcome in order to fully achieve the objective of regulation, standardisation and integration of traditional medicines in Africa.
First and foremost, the ethnocentric and medicocentric tendencies of the Western hegemonic mentality that are usually paraded by most stakeholders in modern medicine remains a very serious challenge.
It is a general belief in medical circle that traditional medicine defies scientific procedures in terms of objectivity, measurement, codification and classification.
After all, the Western people did not develop their medical aspect in order to integrate it with anyone else.
Theirs was to first make themselves and later the rest of the world live a healthy life.
From this point of view, if traditional medicine is co-opted into the modern medicine, it would further justify and promote the supremacy or superiority of the cosmopolitan medicine thereby jeopardising the identity and integrity of traditional medicine in Africa.
Western culture particularly into rural parts of Africa has had a tremendous negative impact on the role traditional medicine plays.
Western education, Christianity and increased contact with the global community become an integral part of rural communities, taboos, traditions and customs have been affected and in some instances abandoned altogether.
These challenges notwithstanding, there is increasing evidence that traditional medicine would continue to hold sway in both rural and urban communities of Africa even when modern health care facilities are available to meet wide range of health care needs.
Traditional medical system used to be the dominant health care system in Africa prior to the period of colonialism.
To some extent, colonialism, Western religion and education as well as globalisation phenomenon have negatively affected the perception about traditional medicine in Africa, usually among the educated elites.
This notwithstanding, the demand for and use of traditional medicine have continued to grow not only in Africa, but the entire world.
Recent studies in healthcare seeking behaviour, therefore, are increasingly coming to a realisation that traditional practitioners are important players in healing processes especially in developing countries.
Indeed, there is evidence to show that traditional healers have contributed to promoting positive health behaviour and serve as a good referral point to modern health care system.
Traditional healers can provide a lead to scientific breakthrough in modern medicine.