Traditional and Orthodox Medicine

The Narrowing Abyss

Quite frankly, there is a deep gulf between a Traditional Alternative Medicine, (TAM), practitioner and an orthodox medical practitioner. True, in the past and even now, most alternative medicine practitioners live and operate from hovels, hamlets and sprawling villages.

In the past, most of them had no formal education. However, the story for now is different. Today, some TM practitioner's are

well-read. But there is some convergence, though. Despite our divergent views, or ambivalent dispositions to TM, there is currently a runaway impression on the efficacy of natural medicine becoming increasingly undoubtful, and acclaimed not to have lingering side-effects.

  Either because of their respectable curriculum of education of the human anatomy; the scientific names of plants; the weird names of pungent chemicals; the awful smell emanating from their laboratories; the knowledge of some concomitant esoteric subjects tinctured with arcane terminologies, most orthodox medical practitioners regard practitioners of natural medicine with boundless disdain.

  Do you blame them? Their profession is regulated by laws that enthrone discipline and professional ethos. Hups! And they carry themselves with a measure of conservative respectability. But what about traditional alternative medicine practitioners, derogatively regarded as Native Doctors, short of calling them fetish vessels. But enough of the semantics!

  In the twilight of his 8-year tenure, former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who publicly encouraged the promotion of authentic, serious minded, focused and forward looking practice of TM, presided over a Federal Executive Council that endorsed the draft policy that later metamorphosed into a Traditional Medicine Bill.

  For goodness sake, why is the movement of this bill from the legal draught man, to the National Assembly and then to the president a reproduction of the perennial Lagos traffic tie up? The bill we are told would, as an instrument of our national law, establish a Traditional Medical Council, (TMC), that would regulate the practice of traditional medicine in Nigeria.

 Any serious law that regulates the practice of a profession must necessarily indicate a benchmark of those qualified to practice its trade. This will, undoubtedly elicit some aura of seriousness and respectability in TM. But this commendable proposition is bad news to the alarming presence of quacks operating from dingy shacks in many of our awful motor parks.

 Have you heard? The proposed Traditional Medical Council would be made up of 51 people, essentially because of Nigeria's   troubling calculus of balance in Federal structure. Can somebody please whisper to those in charge, that a medical council is not, and cannot be our nation's Olympic team. We crave for a reasonably less wieldy TMC that can bark and truly bite.

  Let the truth be told! Until the emergence of Professor Eyitayo Lambo, as Health Minister in the last Obasanjo's government, our ministries of health, in the states and federal, simply treated and left issues relating to natural medicine and its practice along the corridors of their offices.

  So, the modern stars in TM, well-read, widely traveled, determined, focused and unrelenting amidst the rumblings of uncomplimentary remarks against traditional alternative medicine, crossed the conspiratorial bridge and embraced other young stars in orthodox medicine who were mainly interested in research and human development.

  They found accommodation and solace in professor Turner Isoun while he was Minister of Science and Technology who graciously evolved a synergy and encouraged them to cooperate and work together in collective harmony for the good of Nigerians and mankind.

  Isoun followed with the establishment of the Nigerian Natural Medicine Development Agency(NNMDA), in Lagos, which is wholesomely committed to research in medicinal plants and traditional medicine. And the NNMDA, led by its indefatiguable Director-General, Mr. Tanumo Okujagu, has been unstoppable in generating scientific evidence for use in traditional medicine, both in written publications and colour photo documentation.

  Even though, the federal Ministry of Health now has an Alternative Medicine Department just like most state ministries of health, the truth must be told. The ministry of health tarried too long in recognizing the potency of TAM.

  The much expected synergy between orthodox and TM should begin with a well-planned and jointly coordinated approach designed to develop natural medicine alongside orthodox medicine by both ministries.

   Annual world trade in herbal medicine is about $75 billion. Over 70 percent of Nigerians now depend on natural medicine. In Africa, and other parts of the world, millions of people are embracing natural medicine as food supplements. And now , the women virtually in all countries, have made a detour, preferring cosmetics made from natural products.

  Inadvertently, all our pretensions, as well as social and religious aversions to natural medicine are all crumbling before us because reality has dawn on u. And this new dawn, truly pregnant, will hopefully give birth to the synergy that will narrow the abyss between TM and orthodox medicine. We pray!