Herbalists are so popular in Africa that an herb trading market in Durban is said to attract between , and , traders a year from South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. Smaller herb markets exist in virtually every community. There are strong spiritual aspects to traditional African medicine, with a widespread belief among practitioners that psycho spiritual aspects must be addressed before medical aspects.
Among traditional healers, the ability to diagnose an illness is considered a gift from both God and the practitioner's ancestors. A major emphasis is placed on determining the root cause underlying any sickness or bad luck.
Illness is said to stem from a lack of balance between the patient and his or her social environment. It is this imbalance that determines the choice of the healing plant, which is valued as much for its symbolic and spiritual significance as for its medicinal effect.
For example, the colours white, black, and red are considered especially symbolic or magical. Seeds, leaves, and twigs bearing these colours are deemed to possess special properties. Diviners may use plants not only for healing purposes but also to control weather and events.
In addition to plants, traditional African healers may employ charms, incantations, and casting of spells. The dualistic nature of traditional African medicine between the body and soul, matter, and spirit and their interactions with one another are also seen as a form of magic. Richard Onwuanibe gives one form of magic the name "Extra-Sensory- Trojection.
This is referred to by the Ibos as egba ogwu. To remove the malignant object, the intervention of a second medicine man is typically required, who then removes it by making an incision in the patient.
Egba ogwu involves psychokinetic processes. Another form of magic used by these practitioners, which is more widely known, is sympathetic magic, in which a model is made of the victim. Actions performed on the model are transferred to the victim, in a manner similar to the familiar voodoo doll.
One traditional African medicinal cure that has developed a wide following outside the continent is pygeum Prunus africana , which has been sold in Europe since the s as a treatment for mild-to-moderate benign prostatic hyperplasia. Each year, 2, metric tons of pygeum barks are harvested in Cameroon and another tonsare 2 Onwuanibe, Richard C In Africa, the bark is made into a tea. Elsewhere in the world, it is sold in powders, tinctures, and pills, often combined with other herbs believed to help with prostate problems.
Users report greater ease of urination, with reduced inflammation and cholesterol deposits. A comparison between numbers of traditional healers and medical doctors demonstrates the importance of this healing modality in Africa. In the Venda area of South Africa, there is one traditional practitioner for every —1, people, compared to one physician for every 17, people.
Swaziland has one traditional healer for every people. Benin City, Nigeria has the same ratio. Urban Kenya has one traditional healer per populations. Quinine from Cinchona bark was used to manage the symptoms of malaria long before the disease was identified and the raw ingredients of a common or garden aspirin tablet have been a popular painkiller for a longer than we have access to tablet making machinery.
Then, came the evolution inspired by the development of the pharmaceutical industry and synthetic drugs dominated through medicine has never been out of scene. Moreover, today many pharmaceutical classes of drugs include a natural product prototype3. Aziz, S. Ali and M. Saeed, Pharmacological basis for the use of peach leaves in constipation.
Ethnopharmacol, Most of these plants-derived drugs were originally discovered through the study of herbal cures and folk knowledge of traditional people and some of these could not be substituted despite the enormous advantages in synthetic chemistry.
A lot of traditional medicines have been reported with their different ethno medical correlations. Further, to call it an alternative is wrong, since it formed the basis for other types of medicine practiced today — conventional, herbal, Chinese, etc.
Africa is considered to be the cradle of mankind with a rich biological and cultural diversity marked by regional differences in healing practices.
African traditional medicine in its varied forms is holistic involving both the body and the mind. The traditional healer typically diagnoses and treats the psychological basis of an illness before prescribing medicines, particularly medicinal plants to treat the symptoms. The sustained interest in traditional medicine in the African healthcare system can be justified by two major reasons.
The first one is inadequate access to allopathic medicines and western forms of treatments, whereby the majority of people in Africa cannot afford access to modern medical care either because it is too costly or because there are no medical service providers. Herbal medicines in Africa are generally not adequately researched, and are weakly regulated. There is a lack of the detailed documentation of the traditional knowledge, which is generally transferred orally. Serious adverse effects can result from misidentification or misuse of healing plants.
The most common traditional medicine in common practice across the African continent before the advent of science is the use of medicinal plants. In many parts of Africa, medicinal plants are the most easily accessible health resource available to the community.
In addition, they are most often the preferred option for the patients. Under colonial rule, traditional diviner-healers were outlawed because they were considered by many nations to be practitioners of witchcraft and magic, and declared illegal by the colonial authorities, creating a war against aspects of the indigenous culture that were seen as witchcraft.
After Mozambique obtained independence in , attempts to control traditional medicine went as far as sending diviner-healers to re-education camps. As colonialism and Christianity spread through Africa, colonialists built general hospitals and Christian missionaries built private ones, with the hopes of making headway against widespread diseases. Little was done to investigate the legitimacy of these practices, as many foreigners believed that the native medical practices were pagan and superstitious and could only be suitably fixed by inheriting Western methods.
During times of conflict, opposition has been particularly vehement as people are more likely to call on the supernatural realm. Consequently, doctors and health practitioners have, inmost cases, continued to shun traditional practitioners despite their contribution to meeting the basic health needs of the population.
Conserve Africa. Pambazuka News. Retrieved 23 August Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine. Retrieved 24 September Developing countries have begun to realize the high costs of modern health care systems and the technologies that are required, thus proving Africa's dependence to it. Due to this, interest has recently been expressed in integrating traditional African medicine into the continent's national health care systems. An African healer embraced this concept by making a bed hospital, the first of its kind, in Kwa-Mhlanga, South Africa, which combines traditional methods with homeopathy, iridology, and other Western healing methods, even including some traditional Asian medicine.
However, the highly sophisticated technology involved in modern medicine, which is beginning to integrate into Africa's health care system, could possibly destroy Africa's deep-seated cultural values.
In African culture, it is believed that "nobody becomes sick without sufficient reason"7 Traditional practitioners look at the ultimate "who" rather than the "what" when locating the cause and cure of an illness, and the answers given come from the cosmological beliefs of the people.
Rather than 7 Onwuanibe, Richard C Natural causes are, in fact, not seen as natural at all, but manipulations of spirits or the gods. For example, sickness is sometimes said to be attributed to guilt by the person, family, or village for a sin or moral infringement. The illness, therefore, would stem from the displeasure of the gods or God, due to an infraction of universal moral law.
According to the type of imbalance the individual is experiencing, an appropriate healing plant will be used, which is valued for its symbolic and spiritual significance as well as for its medicinal effect. When a person falls ill, a traditional practitioner uses incantations to make a diagnosis. Incantations are thought to give the air of mystical and cosmic connections. Divination is typically used if the illness is not easily identified, otherwise, the sickness may be quickly diagnosed and given a remedy.
If divination is required, then the practitioner will advise the patient to consult a diviner who can further give a diagnosis and cure. Contact with the spirit world through divination often requires not only medication, but sacrifices. Migraines, coughs, abscesses, and pleurisy are often treated using the method of "bleed-cupping" after which an herbal ointment is applied with follow-up herbal drugs.
Phytomedicine phytomedicine products create are good dietary supplements, which employment for the producing countries are nutritive and can replenish the body. Gunasena and Hughes, Such million respectively. The U. An light exposure Elujoba et al. Hypercium perforatum adulteration of plants, incorrect St. Makhubu, Also, the traditional making, abandoning outdated healers are of advancing age and dying legislation such as witchcraft act, Elujoba, The following ultraviolet UV spectrometry Calixto, With the growth of the Makhubu, The dietary supplements improved so as to produce industry: A Market Analysis.
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