The Challenges Facing Traditional Medicine Today

Traditional Medicine

Traditional Medicines (T.M) cover treatment from different sources such as organisms, herbs, rocks and other natural materials. All these methods of treatments have really helped many people in the past including Nigerians.
The most common are herbal medicine. The World Health Organization (W.H.O) estimates that about 35,000 – 70,000 species of plants are used around the world for treatment of various disease. Out of these, only about 5,000 have been submitted for biomedical scrutiny.

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Nature has gifted us with so many medicines infused in plants and other natural materials. There are many natural medicines used in the treatment of diseases in the past. Some of them have been incorporated into orthodox medicines such as quinine. So many herbal preparations that have been shown to be effective against diseases but have not been studied or adequately documented. Moreover, many are gradually going into extinction. There are challenges facing traditional medicine today even as it is been studied in pharmacy. The time to act is now. The reasons are simple.

Challenges Facing Traditional Medicine

Over the years, a number of factors have hindered the growth of traditional medicine in Nigeria. They include;

Collaboration

It is known that so many traditional remedies are very effective against some disease. Traditional medicine dealers were very good at diagnosis. However, due to human nature, not all diagnosis seems to be accurate. They fail to refer to a laboratory for test.

Regulation

The world is growing and regulation is what gives the common person confidence on any process. The procedures for the making of these traditional remedies are never documented. it makes the educated and enlightened to doubt the authenticity of these methods of treatment.

Religion

Those that accept traditional remedies are those whose religion has not condemn it. Due to the fact that some traditional medicine practitioner use incantation in their method, some religion does not accept this method of treatment. The line between herbal medicine and incantation is very thin.

Fieldwork

Fieldwork in traditional medicine is very low. There has not been any history of the proper documentation of process and methods of traditional medicine before the colonial era. This unlike the east where some documents have been obtained. This may be due to the fact that they where fortunate to have writing materials. According to one time United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (U.N.E.S.C.O) ambassador, Ahmadou HampateBa, said that 'when an old person dies in Africa, it is like a library set ablaze.' Also, G. G. Darah was worried about how much is yet to be done in terms of collection and publication of materials.

The people archives, which is the old people with proper knowledge of TM, keep dying without leaving behind these to replace them. Those who are supposed to replace them are the children. Where are the children?

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They are finding modern amusements in other places like city life. Since they leave the city for modern life, the old forget what they know since there is nobody to tell.

Other Problems

Other problems are barriers that stand in the way of researchers and TM dealers who may feel the researcher wants the information to make money. Other times, they fear the unknown which altogether hinder the progress of research into TM in Nigeria

What Can Be Done?

Time to act is now before the peoples achieve die from this earth. If we wait until that time, we may end up with little or no recipe to work on. The number of old with knowledge of good recipes is reducing daily. The young prefer the well-recognised career in pharmacy than in TM. We all can contribute our quarter by;

• Sending details of TM recipe to laboratory known to study TM
• TM practitioners should make their recipes known especially when they are getting old and teach those who are ready even if they are not their children without much price
• The government should legalise training centres for TM. Very few centres are available for training in Nigeria.

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