The President of the Ghana Association of Medical Herbalists; Dr (MH) Anthony Mensah has made a call to various stakeholders at the Ministry of Health and National Health Insurance Authority to enlist Herbal medicines onto the Medicine lists.
He made this call during his speech at the celebration of the 20th Commemoration of the African Traditional Medicine Day at the National Theatre on Thursday.
“There are about 55 government hospitals across the country where Professional Herbal medicine services are rendered as a way to achieve Universal Health Coverage through the integration of Traditional medicine in mainstream healthcare.”
This service is delivered by over 100 Medical Herbalists or currently known as Physician Phytotherapists or Medical Phytotherapists who have been posted to 55 government hospitals across the country, He added
However, due to the lack of coverage of herbal medicine in the national health insurance scheme program, patients who show interest in their services are unable to patronize their services and rather opt for the orthodox.
He stated this is leading to low patronage of their services since the patient will end up patronizing the alternative orthodox services despite interest in the former.
Traditional and Herbal medicine remained a trusted and accessible source of healthcare for millions of people around the world including Ghana.
It is estimated 70 percent of the Ghanaian population used some form of traditional and alternative medicine for their primary healthcare needs with over 100,000 traditional medicine practitioners dotted across the nation, serving as the backbone of the healthcare delivery system.
Therefore, its imperative Government and key stakeholders pay massive attention to this aspect of healthcare especially enlisting Herbal medicine in the National Health Insurance Program after a decade of successful integration of Herbal medicine into Mainstream healthcare.
He added efforts need to be made towards cleansing the airways and media outlets of the country of falsehood claims by some quacks and Charlatans in the name of Health education.
Dr. Mensah added this is tarnishing the image of traditional and herbal medicine practices in the country. Therefore, the Traditional medicine practice council and key stakeholders must be robust in championing this affair towards sanitizing the airway of this country.
