Why is it that you doctors don’t want to hear about or prescribe herbal medicine? My patients are always asking me that million naira question. Even though I do prescribe and use herbal supplements in my practice.
There is for now and in the foreseeable future an ongoing battle between Orthodox doctors (popularly known as western trained doctors) and alternative medicine practitioners. Also known as Chinese traditional medicine (TCM) practitioners.
This is not only in Nigeria, but all over the world. But here in Nigeria there are additional peculiar circumstances which I want to highlight here. Fear of the unknown. Most herbs produced in Nigeria come with serious lack of information.
It is not enough to say this herb is good for headache, fever, arthritis, infertility and so on and so forth. I need to know what are such herbs? And the percentages of the components. Patients safety. No matter what we say, the buck stops on the doctor’s table. If anything goes wrong with the patient, it is the doctor’s and the hospital’s necks. When patients die, what you will hear is that he or she died at so and so hospital.
Nobody talks about the drugs used that caused such deaths. Nil documentation. In Orthodox medicine, the drugs had undergone various tests in both animals and man before being brought into the market for sale.
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These documents are used as proofs before the doctor will touch such drugs. This is not the same with herbs. Accountability. Until of recent when NAFDAC started insisting on registration, herbal product formulation was an all comers affair. Anybody could just wake up one day, put some concoctions together under a very serious unhygienic condition and start selling. Some will put totally unrelated labels on them and others would not.
The sellers and manufacturers were not accountable to anybody. You could take it, fall down and die instantly. Chikena. Bye bye. Nobody arrests the seller or the manufacturers. All what you hear is about witches and wizards that didn’t allow the herbs to work. If they want to be kind, they will say that ‘ko ba Lara mu ni’. Or that arun yen ti Wo Lara ju. No serious regulation. Even in the US, the FDA, is seriously hampered.
Not to talk about Nigeria. With us here, the health sector even gets more deregulated as the days go by. The loopholes are just too many for the crooks to jump in. Legal. The doctor/hospital can be sued and taken to court.
But not so for the alternative medicine man or woman. The doctor could lose his certificate and his hospital closed Down. Who gains, who loses? Peer Pressure.
This is a dou- Sex and Marriage Counselor [email protected] Dr. Taiwo Fadeyi 08033148899 ble edged sword. As a medical doctor I also went ahead and studied herbal medicine. Funny enough some of my patients give me a bad eye when I tell them this. Even some of my friends and colleagues.
Some even call me Babalawo doctor. They immediately think I must be involved or using incantations and dining with the devil. Good News. Times are changing. Herbal supplements now give more details about their components. More medical schools and doctors are now embracing alternative medicine.
But still we all need to be very careful. Not all that glitters is gold. There are still a lot of fake and injurious herbal products out there.
A patient of mine once bought one for diabetes and stopped using his regular drugs. It didn’t work, gave him rashes all over and he also lost his erection totally. There are many more examples. Just as in Orthodox medicine. Sadly enough they are sold all over the internet now. Bottom line. Shine your eyes very well before you spend your money and destroy your health.
By Dr. Taiwo Fadeyi
New Telegraph News
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