…Calls For Setting Up of A Critical Thinking Body For Nigeria
By Chibuike Nwabuko
Abuja (Sundiata Post) – A pathologist with the National Hospital, Dr. Henry Ewunonu has said that it is time to integrate traditional medicine into orthodox medical practice as modern medicine is failing because of its prohibitive cost and as Nigerians continue to lament about shortage of trained manpower or workforce.
This is also as he has advocated for the setting up of a “critical thinking body for the nation who job is to do nothing else than thinking positively for the good of the country.
He hinted this on Monday in an interview with our political correspondent in his National Hospital office in Abuja.
According to the pathologist, “there is an overriding need to start thinking seriously about the contribution of traditional medicine and integrating such into orthodox care in our nation. Nigerians are strong adherents of the two Abrahamic religion plus our native one, the traditional medicine and in all these, there are places for strong believe about healing and we believe that for instance, the book of Genesis provide notion that vegetation around, God told Adam that it is for foods and herbs.
Meaning that these vegetation around us therefore are for specific purposes. As modern medicine is failing because of its prohibitive cost, as we continue to shout about short of trained manpower or workforce, it is becoming more and more important, if not exigent that we start looking into what nature has given us in terms of skills. We know that certain skilling skills run in families for instance, there are some families that are renowned for bone- setting or fracture management; some are renowned for mentally- illed patients, there are some that are renowned from great grandmother to the present daughters, they are traditional mid-wives.
In our country today, current realities must propel us to start looking inside the box. By looking inside the box I mean, in the presence of very glaring dearth or deficiency in number of trained work-force, how do we integrate the non-trained ones, train them to mitigate the gap. Give them limits, supervise them. For instance, we can have one medical doctor and a few mid-wives supervising traditional mid-wives within a particular local government area. Tell them the warning signs, the red flags they should look out for on a woman in labour and to call for help instead of living certain communities bare of any form of treatment and after we turn back and shout Oh, high mortal mortality. So what is Nigeria’s response to high mortal mortality?
We all know how difficult it is to manage bone fracture in Nigeria. We don’t have enough orthopedic surgeons, so how do we empower the local traditional bone setters, he asked?
China and other countries have done this and not abandoned their trado-medicals. Chinese herbs are everywhere and Indian herbs are everywhere. India is now renowned to be the highest producer of spices all over the world. Some of these herbs have been converted into spices and integrated into nutrition.
Nutrition is an issue and Nigeria is now known to be the highest country with stunted children in Africa. What is our response, instead we are trying to import what they call high-impact-diet nutrition whatever formulated in laboratories, factories in Europe and America.
Is there nothing high impact down here? I know one herb called “hospital-is-far”. What does it do? They said that it’s the best herb for curing anemia. Pregnant women, a child and the blood level is low, this hospital-is-far herb revitalizes the blood system within a matter of weeks.
In addition to our Ugu and pawpaw leaves, these are just few examples to show that perhaps if we look inwards, we may find cure for even cancer.
Our frustration is coming from the fact that there appear to be no critical thinking body in this country. A body that its duty, whether legislature, executive or civil society whose duty is to think for the country. People who do nothing else than thinking positively for the good of the country. People who are disturbed enough about how badly we are performing as a nation and now constitute themselves into wearing the thinking caps where they say let us look within. So I think it is worth exploring because that African science so to speak, is fast getting obsolete and endangered because the practitioners are getting old.
Many have died with that knowledge and nobody recorded them or documented that body of knowledge they had and they have died with it. Of course because that practice was labeled fetish, so their children have gone to the cities in search of white collar jobs.
Meanwhile our country men and women are in dare need of such technology, such science and such practices. So time to integrate traditional medicine into modern or orthodox medicine was yesterday not even today.
