The National Experts Committee on Research and Development (NECRD) has urged traditional medicine practitioners who have herbal remedies with the Committee to provide some funds to conduct necessary researches on them.
Its Coordinator, Prof Adebukunola Adefule-Ositelu, said practioners have showed little or no effort to support the herbal products, “What they do is put their remedies down and go away without realising that conducting research takes a lot, especially funding,” she said.
Prof Adefule-Ositelu, who spoke during NECRD meeting, said the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi Araba, Lagos State Traditional Medicine Board and the Research Institute of Traditional Medicine (RITAM) among others are ready to conduct the research but practitioners have not been supportive of the research on their products.
She said Mr President Goodluck Jonathan asked the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to present six herbal products that can be exported, adding that none was available.
Despite this challenge, she said: “Samples of remedies for diabetes, prostate enlargement and glands will be sent to the hospital’s Endocrine Department for research. Model clinics will be established and only tested and approved herbal drugs will be used to treat patients.”
Head, Anatomy Department, Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago Iwoye, Ogun State, Dr Adebayo Adefule, said practitioners should present their claims and invention, adding that hiding them is not good. “They need to bring them out for proof so that they can be evidence-based. There should be patency rights which is quite expensive,” he said.
He said selling herbal drugs by practitioners would be easy if they could do their preliminary works well.
Managing Director, Health Forever Limited, Otunba Olajuwon Okubena, said the sector has been experiencing motion without movement.
This, he said was because the front runners in the practice didn’t do what they should do.
He criticised decision makers, adding that retarded the growth of traditional medicine because, “they don’t do anything about our practice, yet they make unfavourable decisions about it.”
He said the establishment of model clinics would contribute to the development to the profession because there will be adequate documentation of data and practitioners can be trained there.
“Without model clinics, where are you going to train practitioners? Nowhere,” Okubena said.
He said only evidence-based drugs would be used in the model clinics, adding that this would encourage practioners to present the remedies for clinical trials.
Registrar, Lagos State Traditioner Medicine Board (LSTMB), Dr Bodunrin Oluwa, warned practitioners to desist from making unfounded claims on their products that have not been proven by appropriate authorities for both or either efficacy and toxicity.
He said the Joseph Lambo Model Clinic will be opened to test some of the drugs, “this will afford the practitioners the opportunity to use the drugs in a monitored environment,” he said.
