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Health Ministry to ensure that every hospital soon gets medical herbalists to supplement and improve healthcare.

The Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, says the Ministry would ensure that every hospital soon gets medical herbalists to supplement and improve healthcare.

Medical herbalists are trained to incorporate scientific methods into their work to upgrade their practice and polish their arts.

He said the Ministry was striving to develop traditional medicines to the levels of countries like China, which was not attainable without the incorporation of science and research into traditional medicine.

Mr Agyeman-Manu said this in a speech read on his behalf in Accra at the commemoration of the 17th African Traditional Medicine Day and the Launch of Ghana’s 20th Anniversary in Traditional Medicine.

It was on the theme: “Integration of Traditional Medicine in the Curricula of Health Science Students in Universities of the African Region”.

Mr Agyeman-Manu said Ghana was a growing market for traditional medicine with the Traditional Medicine Practice Council receiving a number of licensing applications on daily basis.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recorded that 80 per-cent of rural dwellers patronised herbal medicine, however many in the urban areas used such medications currently.

Mr Agyeman-Manu said since 2001 the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) had taken the lead in training Medical Herbalists while the University of Health and Allied Sciences had recently started an Institute of Traditional Medicine.

“This would make traditional medicine attractive to the younger generation to pursue at different levels of academia.”

The Country Representative of WHO, Dr Owen Laws Kaluwa, said the anniversary offered an opportunity to celebrate the tremendous progress in traditional medicine in Africa over the past 20 years. Dr Kaluwa said there was the need for herbalists to pursue academic training to polish their arts and document outcomes to grow the industry.

He said the WHO had developed and field tested traditional medicine training tools with Pharmacy and Medical students in 14 Member states to enhance the integration of traditional medicine into the health delivery system.   

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