'Add herbal formulae to essential drugs list'

Page 31, May 6, 2008
Story: Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah
THE Minister of Health, Major Courage Quashigah (retd), has charged authorities of the health sector in the West African sub-region to make herbal medicine an integral part of health care.
He noted that the introduction of various herbal formulae on the essential medicines list in the sub-region required the co-operation of both Western orthodox medicine practitioners and conventional African medicine practitioners to achieve its intended purpose.
Major Quashigah made the call at the opening session of the four-day discussion forum for traditional medicine practitioners (TMPs) and conventional health practitioners/scientists in Accra yesterday.
The forum is being held by the Burkina Faso-based West African Health Organisation (WAHO) to bring traditional health practitioners, Western orthodox medical practitioners, scientists and researchers together to discuss how to achieve optimum healthcare delivery for the people of West Africa.
About 30 participants drawn from 14 West African countries are attending the four-day meeting.
The Health Minister acknowledged the fact that before the advent of Western orthodox medicine, traditional African practitioners successfully contained the level of diseases on the continent.
He said although the role that traditional African medicine continued to play in containing the huge disease burden in Africa had long been realised, that trend was often largely overlooked in healthcare planning.
Major Quashigah said it was heart warming, however, that through the work of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the African Union and WAHO, more countries were beginning to bring traditional African medicine into their formal health sector.
“There is no doubt that a lot of work has been done to modernise and demystify the practices in traditional medicine to make them more reliable and credible by subjecting them to constant evaluation and regulation”, he said.
Major Quashigah added that it was, however, imperative for serious efforts to be made to ensure documentation of clinical data, even at the herbalist’s practice facility.
He said that called for continuing training, education, effective communication and deliberations among herbalists, researchers and medical experts.
Major Quashigah blamed the lack of documented evidence not only on inadequacy of healthcare policies but also the lack of interest and inadequate research methodology for the clinical evaluation of herbal medicine.
He said although there were several published and unpublished information on pre-clinical studies in plant medicine, information on human clinical studies was scanty.
Major Quashigah acknowledged the efforts of traditional herbalists at their clinics but noted, however, that they did not have the skill, technique and equipment to measure and the knowledge to analyse data the way an independent scientist understood them.
Recognising that, the minister said, Ghana had begun to develop a stakeholder’s strategic plan, the harmonised laboratory procedures of safety, efficacy and quality control of herbal medicines.
Monographs on the 50 most commonly used medicinal plants were available in the form of the Ghana Herbal Pharmacopoeia, while ethno-botanical information on some 600 other medicinal plants and over 3,000 recipes had been documented, he added.
He stated that the Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine in Ghana, which was re-establishing itself as a WHO collaborating centre on research had screened over 2,500 formulations for safety, out of which 1,007 had applied for and received the Food and Drug Board (FDB) market authorisation since 2002.
In his address, Dr Kofi Busia of WAHO said the meeting would offer practitioners an opportunity to leave behind the stale and sterile dogmas of the past.
“It should remind us that knowledge of both therapies, not suspicion and mistrust, is the pass key to medical provision in the 21st century, that the health of our people transcends petty antagonisms, that medical knowledge is not the possession of a single professional group or a single ideology but of all mankind,” he said.
In an address read on his behalf, the WHO Regional Director, Dr Luis Sambo, commended WAHO for successfully developing harmonised sub-regional policies and regulatory frameworks for ensuring the institutionalisation of traditional medicine in the health systems of its member states.