Submit herbal products for safety test - minister

Accra, Oct. 29, GNA- Major Courage Quashigah (RTD), the Minister of Health, on Sunday appealed to traditional medicine practitioners to submit their products to appropriate agencies for efficacy and safety test.

He has also advised them to comply with the ban on the advertisement of medicines in the media.

Maj Quashigah said this when he launched the new membership card for the Ghana Federation of Traditional medicine Practitioners Association (GHAFTRAM) in Accra.

The new card is to help in GHAFTRAM's membership drive, facilitate the collation of data on its members and to monitor their activities. The Minister, an ardent advocate of traditional medicine, said the mere mention of this type of remedy "evokes a number of complex responses from enthusiasm to scepticism even though it is estimated that about 70 percent of rural and peri-urban people seek traditional remedies for their health needs."

This fact, he said, placed enormous responsibility on the Ministry of Health to take a critical look at traditional medicine practice to ensure safety and effectiveness of the service.

"Consequently, a structure of relationship and control through education and regulations are required to open traditional medicine to modernization and quality assurance."

Maj Quashigah said the ministry had initiated programmes that would ensure the safety of traditional medicine products and practices and to encourage sector-wide approach to regulating, controlling and guiding the practice to make it widely acceptable and accessible to majority of Ghanaians.

He said a committee was working on an essential herbal medicine list to select herbal products that are safe and efficacious. Furthermore, a team has also been commissioned to meet practitioners who have products useful for people living with HIV/AIDS and to draw a format for selection of their products.

The Minister commended the executive of GHAFTRAM for their initiative to develop the membership card that would ensure that they comply with the code of ethics and standards of traditional medicine practice. He appealed to all practitioners to support the leadership of the association to weed out the undesirables amongst them. Nana Agya Appiah, President of GHAFTRAM, said it was the hope of the association that the new membership card would mark the first step to have a credible register of traditional medicine practitioners all over the country towards the preparation of a herbal pharmacopoeia for GHAFTRAM.

He said GHARFTRAM would undertake a new membership drive with the new card but would vigorously vet applicants who make claims that they were traditional medicine practitioners.

Agya Appiah cautioned members that bearing the card entailed lending support for government's health policies such as the National Health Insurance Scheme.

He appealed to each member with the new card to resolve to work professionally and to uphold the integrity and goodwill that GHAFTRAM is now enjoying. 29 Oct 06