Herbal medicine practitioners have identified research as a major challenge in the standardisation of products.
Barring their mind to The Tide during the just concluded Port Harcourt Herbal Medicine Exhibition held at the Isaac Boro Park in Port Harcourt, last weekend, they urged regulatory bodies to provide support in the area of research.
Proprietor of Babaloma Herbals, Mr Adokunle Adeshida stated that if herbal drugs are well researched and packaged, it will help improve revenue earnings for the federal government.
Mr Adeshida pointed out that the country has huge herbal resources that could be utilised to empower the health and well being of the citizenry and therefore challenged the authorities to provide basic funding for research.
“Many people are tired of orthodox medicine”, Adeshida observed and said “people who have used herbal drugs have confirmed that they were able to cure their health challenges”.
He explained that because of the efficiency of herbal medicine in treating various diseases, the use of herbal products have increased over the years.
“There are some cases that require natural treatment so I will rather seek for cooperation between orthodox medical doctors and herbal doctors”, Adeshida remarked.
On his part, Dr Ndubuisi Ojukwu of ND Medical and Botanical Centre blamed poor patronage of traditional medicine on lack of proper education and awareness on the side of the public.
“Even though herbal medicine are cheaper not everybody are aware that they are very effective”, Dr Ojukwu declared.
Identifying lack of packaging as a major setback to herbal products, he reasoned that once the National Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) provides the necessary research support, herbal products would become more popular.
For Kunle Simeon of Divine Herbs, the federal government needs to fund herbal medicine practitioners to do more research on their products.
Mr Simeon recalled that in the past, there was attempt to provide support during the tenure of Prof Lambo as Minister of Health, but that successive administrations came and jettisoned the policy of improving herbal medicine.
The Proprietor of Divine Herbs maintained that many ailments that have defied orthodox medical treatment such as prostate cancer, ulcer and infertility can be treated with herbal products.
He added that there was need for more research, test and validation of herbal products in order to improve the usage of the drugs.