Nigeria set to present cure for HIV/AIDS

What is alternative medicine?

Alternative medicines are the forms of therapy that tend to focus on the fact that the body has the ability to cure itself if it is given the relevant therapy. In some countries, it is traditional medicine such as acupuncture or homeopathy. When such form of healing leaves the shores of that country and go to another country, it becomes alternative medicine. When you use things from nature to effect healing that is what alternative therapy is about. Alternative medicine does not involve surgery, but there are instances where surgery is inevitable. For instance, if you have a loop of the intestine, they curl together. The doctor will need to open up the patient’s intestine and untwist it. For that, you need surgical intervention. Four branches are recognised by the government and the Medical and Dental Council Nigeria (MDCN). These are Chinese Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Naturopathy and Osteopathy.

Does it mean that our health policy is not totally comprehensive?

Let me just say that no area of medicine can stand on its own and profess to have solution to all aspects of healing. However, before now, perception of alternative medicine by Nigerians, not excluding the educated, has contributed largely to relegating it to the background. For instance, people who are practicing traditional or herbal medicine always hide under the guise of being called ‘doctors’ and they perpetrate all forms of atrocity and quackery all in the name of alternative medicine. They tend to classify themselves as practicing alternative therapy. Some of them say they are running centre for alternative and therapy whereas they are not.The fact that somebody is doing herbal medicine and is able to amass one or two equipments, and he starts calling himself alternative medicine therapist does not make him an alternative medicine practitioner. This would no longer be tolerated, that is why the MDCN has accepted alternative medicine as part of its oversight function and is regulating and registering practitioners of alternative medicine. NACAMA is also out to correct and regulate the practice so that it is only people that are well trained that can be called practitioners of alternative medicine. This is not to say traditional medicine is not effective or recognised. As a matter of fact, the only three arms of medicine recognised by the government are the orthodox which is been domiciled by NMA, alternative medicine and the third is traditional medicine. It is only because the practitioners of traditional medicine are sort of confused about how to be addressed was probably why they preferred being addressed as Alternative Medical Practitioners rather than herbalists. Could it be that they feel it’s derogatory to be called herbalist, which they are or is it they could not differentiate between a herbalist and a ritualist or what? An herbalist uses herbs to offer healing and that is a proud job across the world, ours should not be different.

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Nigeria set to present cure for HIV/AIDS