The Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency (NNMDA) says traditional medicine is at the core of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), not just in Nigeria but Africa.
The Director-General (DG) of NNMDA, Prof. Martin Emeje, said in an interview in Lagos, that no fewer than 140 million Nigerians depended on traditional medicine to access health coverage in Nigeria.
According to Emeje, traditional medicine is not universal or allopathic, but culture-based, with 140 million Nigerians having access to it for cure and healing.
“It is culture-based because different soil components of an environment and attitude of a community could be used as a healing process.
“Traditional medicine has been the core of health care delivery across Nigeria and most African countries, helping to achieve universal health care
“Traditional medicine also has different medicinal properties.
“It is not universal medicine but must be zeroed down to things that make them different in each environment”.
According to him, when it is studied, there is need to apply science and technology to harness or exploit it to the nation’s advantage.
The director-general said that it would be to the nation’s advantage if traditional medicine was harnessed optimally, because science and technology could be applied therein, to develop those things in a form that it would be more beneficial to our people.
“The benefit that our people have is that in our local communities, people are cured, people are healed, people are tended to by the traditional medical practitioners and they do not have any economic benefit, which is not good enough.
“It is our responsibility to educate the traditional medicine practitioners, but before we do that, we must also make it clear that there is need to apply science and technology to develop all of that to reap the benefit.
“If the nation should focus on it to develop traditional medicine in different local governments, there would be at least 100 different traditional recipes, processes and services in each local government”.
According to him, by so doing, health will be taken to the communities and people will have access to durable, functional, affordable and accessible health.
Emeje said that Nigeria would set the example in Africa because NNMDA by law, should also have all trainings done in local languages.
“It is the only government institution that has that kind of law backing it, to ensure that all education is also done in local languages.
“This is because NNMDA’s job also is to ensure that we educate people properly in traditional medicine, using our local languages”.
Emeje said NNMDA sought accreditation from a college, a tertiary institution and had a college accredited by the Federal Ministry of Education through its regulatory agency- the National Board for Technical Education.
According to him, NNMDA offers National Diploma in natural medicine.
He said it also goes into local villages trying to establish centres in willing institutions.
“This is so that in the next three to four years, the nation will begin to have critical mass of people who are highly educated in traditional medicine but using local languages”.
According to him, agency has a Memorandum of Understanding with Covenant University and the Niger Delta University has given NNMDA a huge building to operate in.
Emeje said that the Senate and Council of the Niger Delta University has just approved and NNMDA is starting the natural medicine Institute in that university.
He said that most of the lecturers and students would be from Bayelsa to learn traditional medicine in local languages.
According to him, Bayelsa is top in the world for bone-setting technology and NNMDA is taking this education back to them in the state, so that the nation can also begin to get revenue in forex from these resources.
The DG said that if it is developed properly, then people would start coming from different parts of the world for medical tourism to this country on the grounds of the efficacy of our traditional medicine.
The NNMDA which is under the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, has the mandate to research, collate, document, develop, preserve and promote Nigeria Natural Medicine.
