Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Traditional Medicine Practice Council (TMPC), Nuumo Blafo Akotia Omaetu III, has shared that processes are in place to pass a legislation for the regularisation of traditional medicine practice in the country.
Herbal medicine and traditional medicine are two separate entities that need regularisation. Unlike the herbal medicine producers who are catered for in the Public Health Act, there is none for the traditional practitioners.
Speaking at the maiden edition of the Onua National Dialogue, with focus on Herbal and Traditional Medicine Advertising in Ghana, Nuumo Blafo III indicated that when the Act was being passed, traditional medicine practice, even though had existed for centuries, wasn’t so popular until now, the reason they were not catered for in the current Act.
However, he disclosed there is a bill in Parliament which would soon be passed for the practitioners’ activities to be regulated by an Act.
“Most at times when we mention traditional medicine, some people think of fetish priests which makes the work unattractive. But now if we tell you that people are wearing stethoscope to do traditional medicine… you’ll see a nurse just like an OPD in a hospital and all your vitals will be taken before a doctor gives you a prescription before they will give you medication which is herbal. These are the advancement we’ve had in the business making it attractive.
“So herbal medicine and traditional medicine are both regulated by us the Traditional Medicine Practice Council. When the Act came, alternative medicine was not even popular in Ghana. But now there is a Bill which is in the pipeline to become an Act which is the Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act. So I don’t see any difference between the work but how everyone approaches it,” he disclosed.
Numo Blafo’s reaction came on the back of a call by the Ghana Federation of Traditional Medicine Practitioners Associations (GHAFTRAM) on the need to intensify regulation of traditional medicine practice in the country.
Prof. Samuel Ato Duncan, GHAFTRAM President, who was speaking at the same programme on the theme; Working Together to Promote and not to Inhibit our Heritage, Friday, October 27, 2023, at the Executive Theatre of Media General in Accra, stated that “traditional medicine and practice are two phases that need to be regulated differently.”
“I know someone, –a herbalist –who retrieved bullets from someone’s body by placing a herb on the affected area. Such a herb is not registered, but it is an indigenous practice so how do we regulate that practice? That should be the issue and that’s what’s under the Traditional Medicine Practioners Council (TMPC),” he explained.
According to him, there is the need for the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) to attach the practice aspect of the sector to their mandate, in order to sanitise the field with the Council.
“There is the need to bring the FDA and the TMPC together to look at it,” he averred.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Centre of Awareness also revealed that “the role of the FDA and TMPC are both to protect lives. When we talk about regulation, it is to protect people who consume medicine as well as those that herbal medicine are applied on.
“We should be very firm to look at the regulations in order to protect lives. We should also not lose sight of that indigenous knowledge that has been used for ages.”
In embracing modernity without compromising originality, the Prof. said “there is the need for improvements where research has come in but the indigenous way of doing things must also be preserved.”
