Government Plans Council For Alternative Medicine

The government is to establish an Alternative Medicine Practice Council to regulate the activities of Alternative Medicine practitioners. An Alternative Medicine practitioner is a person who practices any form of medicine that is outside the mainstream orthodox medicine.

The Minister of Health, Dr Kwaku Afriyie, announced this in a speech read on his behalf in Accra, at a two-day workshop for practitioners. He explained that the establishment of the Council was to bring the practitioners together and regulate their activities in order to deliver good health care service.

According to the Minister, only 24 practitioners had so far registered with the Traditional And Alternative Medicine Directorate (TAMD). Information reaching the offices of TAMD, he said, indicated that there were many more who had not registered with the Ministry , either at the regional, district, or sub-district levels.

Nana Office Agyentutu III, Director of TAMD, in his remarks, reminded practitioners of the need to make their operations known. A representative of the Alternative Medical Practitioners lamented the fact that their practice was not recognized and called for the early passage of the bill to give them recognition. Some of the problems they mentioned were lack of national recognition, apathy on the part of the Ministry with respect to inspecting their premises and lack of a law guaranteeing their operations.