Lead Author: Samuel Mongoni
Organization: Traditional Healers and Traditional Medicine Foundation (Thetramed)
Country: Kenya
Abstract
Traditional Medicine can address the issues of availability of Medicine in our health sector, when the issue of the herbal products will be integrated with conventional Medicine within our health care facilities. In Kenya the National process to develop medicinal and aromatic plant species was started in November 2001 when a draft strategy and action plan was formulated by working groups on medicinal and aromatic plants, the aim of this groups was to promote the conservation, sustainable utilization and equitable sharing of benefits arising from Maps for improvement of both human and animal health, and for socio-economic development. But up now their is nothing has come up in side of policy development and implementation of Traditional Medicine in our country we need support from the United nations for health development.
Submission
Traditional Medicine and Healthcare.
Although less development, the traditional medicine system was the main Healthcare system before the advent of colonialism. In particular, the practice forms a significant part of Traditional rural Healthcare. For most of the rural population, it is usually the only accessible Healthcare system. This had been mainly due to the fact modern Healthcare facilities are often beyond reach in terms of distance, awareness and finance. Other factors contributing to the heavy reliance on traditional medicine include social, psychological and cultural. This happens in most of the population in Turkana County in Northern Kenya, has little or no contact with modern Medicine. There are at least 6,000 registered TMPs in Kenya, a greater majority of whom are found in rural areas. This figure represents only a portion of practicing TMPs, through their practice, they manage a wide range of disease conditions. They thus contribute to disease burden amelioration, they are many disease that modern Medicine has failed to manage effectively, for example asthma, diabetes, hypertension, sterility, cancer, etc, but ethnobotanical and ethnomedical surveys among various rural communities have revealed that these can be effectively managed by traditional medicine. The Government focus on research and development on traditional knowledge and medicine has been marginal. Research on traditional knowledge has been scanty and mostly supported by external donor funding, we request more support for development of Traditional Medicine.
Bibliography and References
TMPs means Traditional Medical Practitioners