DAAN Chinese Herbs and Acupuncture

Africa, like Asia, has a long and rich tradition of alternative approaches to health and healing:

“”Zimbabwe is very keen to advance its traditional medicine agenda. We are very keen to partner with China in thatrespect.”

The World Health Organisation says a global health crisis of new and re-emerging diseases spiralling out of control with the added burden of poverty and armed conflicts threatens to cripple entire communities and countries.

Health experts say to tackle the projected crisis, it is important that the biomedical community work to access and harness as many resources and partners as possible.

And they say traditional medicine and healers and the potential contributions they can make at many levels of health delivery still remains a critical resource in addressing some of the global health challenges facing most African countries.

It is pleasing that despite numerous problems, Zimbabwe and most African countries are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of traditional medicine — the practice and body of medicinal knowledge that existed before the arrival of modern conventional medicine which were used to promote, maintain and restore health and well-being.

Just like people in China and most other parts of the world, Africans developed unique indigenous healing traditions adapted and defined by their culture, beliefs and environment, which satisfied the health needs of communities over centuries.

Despite the overriding influence of Western conventional medicines and approaches, African health experts say conventional biomedically-oriented practitioners deliver only 10 to 30 percent of worldwide health care.

They say in poor, rural and marginalised populations, the number of traditional practitioners often exceeds Western-trained doctors.

In Africa south of the Sahara, the ratio of traditional healers to the population is about 1:500 in contrast to the doctor-patient ratio of 1:40 000 on average.

The Traditional Health Practitioners’ Association of Zambia has a membership of 40 000 made up of herbalists, spiritualists, diviners and traditional birth attendants.

The Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers’ Association has a membership of about 55 000 healers who have access to more than 500 different types of medicinal plants.

In South Africa, it is estimated that there are 300 000 traditional practitioners in the sector which has an annual turnover of more than R250 million.

Traditional African medicine has more followers than Western medicine in Africa and increasingly in North America and Europe there is a booming market for indigenous African medicines with Western pharmaceutical giants tapping into the continent’s vast traditional medicine body.

And with proper planning, training, research and collaboration with countries such as China, Zimbabwe’s traditional medical systems can be developed to boost the economy as well as tap into the booming herbal industry worldwide.

“A significant proportion of people depend on traditional medicine,” said Mr Andrew Mushita, director of Community Technology Development Trust.

“The challenge is: how do we systematically integrate traditional medicine with the formal health care system? The challenge is how to repackage this and promote it for easy accessibility by the majority of the people,” said Mr Mushita, whose organisation has documented indigenous foods, medicines and knowledge systems in Zimbabwe.

In Africa, for years, herbs from trees and shrubs, roots, leaves, flowers and bark have been used to cure a range of ailments through the linkage of spirituality and other traditional African religion practices.”

Tags: Culture //