A Professor of Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Toxicology, Adejuwon Adeneye, has advocated teaching of contemporary and alternative medicine courses in the country’s medical colleges.
Adeneye, a lecturer at Lagos State University College of Medicine (LASUCOM), while delivering his inaugural lecture titled: “Green medicine: Nature’s gateway to sustainable healthcare delivery in Nigeria,” said there was an urgent need to incorporate courses on alternative medicine in the university curriculum.
He pointed out that incorporating these courses will help in training, sensitising and widening the frontiers of knowledge of young medical graduates on contemporary and alternative medicine integration.
Adeneye emphasised the need for National Universities Commission (NUC) to establish a minimum benchmark for Nigerian colleges of medicine and encourage academic and professional degree programmes at all levels.
Establishing such degree programmes, he noted, will also give room for robust researches into some of the ethno-medical practices and help to fine-tune such practices for the health benefits of Nigerians.
Adeneye said the role of traditional medicine practice in Nigeria’s healthcare delivery system could not be over-emphasised.
“It is reported that 60 and 85 per cent of the population of every developing country relies on one form of contemporary and alternative medicine or another.
“The wider acceptability of the practice especially in developing countries stems from the fact that, apart from affordability and accessibility, it is believed to be a product of the wisdom and practice of their forefathers.
The university teacher noted that if the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, which centres on – Good health and well-being for all must be achieved by 2030, more attention must be given to the informal sector involved in healthcare delivery at the grassroots.
Adeneye added that it was imperative to safeguard the already endangered collection of medicinal plants in Nigerian forests and promote their local cultivation on a large and sustainable scale.
“This can be accomplished by formulating and enacting short and long-term wildlife conservation and environmental protection laws,” he said.
