Integrating African traditional medicine into national healthcare systems, while taking a leaf from the well-established practices of traditional Chinese medicine, could help address the health crises plaguing the African continent, experts and practitioners suggest.

Africa faces widespread infectious diseases, exacerbated by weak healthcare systems, poverty and limited access to medicine, which place a heavy burden on the continent's already under-resourced health facilities.

The World Health Organization reports that up to 80 percent of Africa's population relies on traditional medicine for its healthcare needs. It also highlights the industry's great commercial potential, stating that 34 research institutes in 26 African countries are dedicated to traditional medicine research and development.

In Kenya, the National Traditional Health Practitioners Association, an umbrella body for traditional medicine practitioners across the continent, has been pushing for the integration of traditional medicine into formal healthcare. It is looking for partnerships with Chinese institutions to develop African traditional medicine.

Stephen Mugambi, the technical adviser to the association, said there is much to learn from traditional Chinese medicine, such as its technology, medicines and research innovations.

Mugambi said the association has written a proposal to Kenya's Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage, requesting funding to send members to China for lessons on developing African traditional medicine.

Meanwhile, the association has signed a collaboration agreement with the University of Nairobi to validate African traditional medicines and natural products.

"The association is pleading with the government of Kenya to ensure that the integration of the African traditional and alternative medicine and practice into the mainstream health system is implemented without any further delays or biases," Mugambi said.

Pharmaceutical companies typically deal only with specific active ingredients from medicinal plants to target specific diseases, separating allopathic practitioners from medicines they use for treatment, he added.

Holistic approach

In contrast, African traditional medicine takes a holistic approach, he said. Practitioners perceive all the active properties of a medicinal plant to be interrelated and believe that the various parts of the body are also related, he added.

Wahome Ngare, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Nairobi with 31 years of practice, said all original and authentic medicines have always been derived from herbs, noting that Africans knew of these medicinal herbs long before the arrival of the colonialists.

Embracing the use of African traditional medicine in healthcare not only restores it to its rightful place but also lowers treatment costs, fosters research, enables regulation and standardization of treatment protocols, and offers African solutions to African problems.

Mbaabu Mathiu, a professor of environmental physiology and ethnomedicine, lamented the loss of traditional African practices under Western influence.

Africans historically used herbal medicines to treat both themselves and their livestock, he said, but the West's perception that anything traditional is backward has undermined their value.

"We should go back to our traditional ways and traditional medicine because they can treat the diseases that are frustrating the continent," he said.