Comprehensive Health Care System without Traditional Medicine: A Distorted Approach

The major purpose of Nigeria’s National Health Policy is comprehensive health care. Nigeria’s healthcare system is actually patterned in line with the universal levels; primary, secondary and tertiary. Unfortunately, traditional medicine (TM) is not recognized at any of these levels. Therefore, this paper assessed the level of successes and weaknesses inherent in orthodox medicine and the aspects that require traditional medicine to improve the system. To achieve this, different articles and documents were reviewed. The result shows that a high profile initiative has been put together by the Health Ministry to articulate Nigeria’s comprehensive actions to fast track the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the current National Health Policy in Nigeria did not incorporate TM. There are idiopathic illnesses, whose causes are unknown to orthodox medicine. This is where TM excels both in prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, a good health care system must incorporate TM through the application of cross-breeding integrative approach. Address for correspondence: Dr. Innocent A. Nwosu Phone: 08067653411 E-mail:innoglo22000@yahoo.com INTRODUCTION The goal of the National Health Policy is to bring about a comprehensive health care system for all citizens of Nigeria. Unfortunately, Nigeria is presently confronted with a health crisis, driven by enormous burden of poverty and disease. Under the current health care system, orthodox medicine has taken the centre stage. Traditional medicine has been relegated to the background. In some cases, traditional medicine has been regarded as fetish, evil, unhygienic and sign of backwardness. This is in spite of the fact that Kaya (2017:16) pointed out that the World Health Organization (WHO) defined traditional medicine (TM) as the “sum total of the knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures..... used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, in improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness.” However, with the neglect of TM, it has been realized that many Nigerians are still dying of preventable and/or curable diseases. Comprehensive healthcare therefore, has been a mirage due to poor quality of services, inefficient service delivery and inadequate resources to finance the system. Actually, health care services mirror society’s cosmology and political structure. That is why it has been difficult to achieve comprehensive health care without recognising the culture and worldview of the people, of which traditional medicine is part. Traditional health care system, which is the oldest medical system in Nigeria, has been the initial avenue of assessing care for seventy-five percent of the Nigerian population (Baidoo2009). This is why Yuan et al. (2016) noted that TMs use natural products and are of great value. According to them, TMs have been practised in different parts of the world for centuries and have in some cases changed to become orderly-regulated systems of medicine. This is particularly common among Asian countries like China. Dong (2013) also added that Chinese Traditional medicine is based on 5000 years of medical practice and experience and is rich in data from “clinical experiments” that portrays its efficacy and effectiveness. Ethno Med, 13(1): 27-36 (2019) DOI: 10.31901/24566772.2019/13.01.584 © Kamla-Raj 2019 PRINT: ISSN 0973-5070 ONLINE: ISSN 2456-6772 28 INNOCENT A. NWOSU, JOSEPH EKPECHU, VIVIAN C. NJEMANZE ET AL. Ethno Med, 13(1): 27-36 (2019) As a result, it can be seen that traditional health care system is a comprehensive medical system on its own. This is because it attends to man’s health needs – biological, psychological, social and spiritual. Traditional medicine (TM), of which traditional healthcare is an integral part, is very effective, efficient, cost less and mostly supported by the people’s culture. Sometimes those problems that are beyond orthodox medicine are successfully handled by traditional healthcare. To buttress the efficacy of traditional medicine, Berube (2015:1) noted: I have an early childhood memory of my grandmother boiling water on a wood stove. A soft cedar scent emanated from the pot. Grandma was coming down with cold, so she was making a rust-coloured tea from a mix of leaves and branches she had gathered in the woods. The tea was going to help her feel better, help her get better. Berube (2015) went further to ask the golden question: “Is there a place for traditional medicine in the present health care system?” The answer he gave was affirmative. Therefore, comprehensive health care system, as an evolving system, should recognise the relevance of the forms of medicine and healing that are steeped in culture and history. The World Health Organisation has acknowledged the importance of traditional medicine and healing in bringing about a new face of health care that includes thinking about and applying a system that has been effective in various societies for centuries. This leads us to the fact that traditional medicine involves working with people to help them heal, not just physically but mentally, emotionally and spiritually, that is, healthcare with focus on patients. That is why Berube (2015) regards traditional healing as a holistic healing because it involves an integrative approach that seeks balance of the environment, the physical, the emotional and the spiritual. In other words, traditional medicine involves the use of healing properties of many medicines found in and on the land and water to bring sick persons back to health. This involves physical materials and healing ceremonies (which at times serve as placebo). The aim of all these is to achieve holistic wellness. It is as a result of all these that World Health Organisation (WHO) emphasized that traditional medicine can be a useful approach to resolve community health problems (Park et al. 2014). Apart from that, traditional medicine is getting significant attention in global health debates. For instance, it helped to manage severe acute respiratory syndrome in some countries like China. Eighty percent of African people use some form of traditional medicine and the world wide annual market for herbal products has reached US $60 billion. There is also hope that traditional medicine research will play a critical role in global health (WHO 2003; Wilcox and Bodeker 2004; Tilburt and Kaptchuk 2008). As attention and public interest for comprehensive health care system grow, more detailed analysis of critical issues in health management in Nigeria is desirable. Scanty literature have addressed selected issues such as the weakness of orthodox medicine under a strange culture, relationship between policy positions and actual practice, different views on integration and views of traditional medicine as a partner with orthodox medicine. Objectives of the Study Therefore, this study applied a practical and widely acceptable anthropological microscopic approach to examine the socio-medical value of traditional medicine, its scientific validity and favourable risk-benefit ratio. Specifically, the study aims at the following: 1. To examine the nature of traditional medicine. 2. To identify the position of traditional medicine in the National Health Policy of Nigeria. 3. To assess the success and weakness of orthodox medicine without TM. 4. To find out the importance of traditional medicine in healthcare system. 5. To identify the most suitable approach towards the integration of orthodox medicine and traditional medicine.