Why herb medicine should be part of health system

Chairman, Board of Traditional Medicine
Practitioners Association, Oyo State branch,
Professor Dayo Oyekola, said the
attainment of health for all will only be
possible when reliable alternative/ holistic
medical therapies are accorded due
recognition in the Primary health care
system.
Professor Oyekola, in a presentation entitled
“Holistic Remedy for HIV: Need or Reality”,
declared that traditional form of medicine
can only support a better health care when
orthodox medical practitioners exhibit
open-mindedness, traditional medicine
practitioners do away with surreptitious
practices and were more involved in
research.
According to him, “the alternative
practitioners know the remedies, but find it
difficult to prove this except by anecdotal
reports. So natural remedies require clinical
trials in order to understand the
pharmacokinetics and to determine their
efficacy as well as effective dose.”
Professor Oyekola decried lack of funding
for alternative/holistic medicine. “No funds
are available for alternative/holistic
medicine, so the research doesn’t get done.
It is a vicious cycle. With the increasing
awareness of the complex nature of the
human body, mind and spirit to which the
alternative remedies are applied, it would be
wrong to dismiss the claim of efficacy just
because they are unproven or difficult to
explain,” he said.
Professor Oyekola, reiterated that no single
system of medicine could provide all the
answers to the numerous health problems
facing mankind, adding that western
medicine was always in conflict with any
effort made especially by Africans to
provide an alternative and more effective
therapeutic measures for HIV/AIDS and
other complex diseases.
He stated that, “just as it is unlikely that
researchers will find a single drug answer
to all infections, so it is unlikely that doctors
will ever find a single drug or vaccine for all
cases of AIDS. Although breakthrough may
be made in the treatment of individual AIDS
cases, it is unlikely that those innovations
will benefit sufferers in all cases.”
Professor Oyekola declared that natural
remedy being advocated for restoring good
health, vitality and total cure in HIV/AIDs
sufferers was a combination of herbal,
nutritional, psychosocial and spiritual
therapies at the appropriate time and in the
right proportion.