Experts brainstorm indigenous medicines’ role in sustainable health care delivery 

The Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency (NNMDA) is organising a one-day virtual colloquium meant to deal with the age-long cold debate on the role of traditional, complementary and integrative medicine in Nigeria’s healthcare delivery system.

The meeting, scheduled for noon (WAT) November 2, 2023, will feature three international experts in three major areas of natural medicine: Prof. Atmaram Pawar, a pharmacist and vice chancellor, will x-ray the role of traditional medicine in one of the world’s most advanced countries in traditional medicine practice; Dr. Willcox, a physician, clinical researcher and lecturer at Oxford University before moving to Southampton University, who has conducted several clinical trial of herbal medicines in Europe and Africa, will share his experience, while Jude Nwokike, a Nigerian and quality of medicines expert, who is deploying his expertise in quality of allopathic medicines around the globe to promoting quality herbal medicines because of its affordability and accessibility, will provide practical strategies to doing this in Nigeria.

Director General, NNMDA, Prof. Martins Emeje, said this colloquium therefore, provides opportunity for genuine lovers of our dear country and its people to engage in dispassionate, and realistic conversation towards developing sustainable strategies to attaining universal health coverage in Nigeria. “To continue to depend on imported health products for our health care delivery is to be brain lazy,” he said.
Emeje, who is also a pharmacist, said the objective of this colloquium therefore, is to have a dispassionate and realistic debate on the role of herbs, medicinal products, skills, practices, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to Nigeria, whether explicable or not, but currently being used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness.

“While we ‘mouth’ that traditional medicine in Nigeria is not ‘international’, the reality is that, majority of our people depend on this means of healing,” Emeje said.