Africanews September -Zimbabwe: More people turn to traditional medicine

[Africanews <ramalkandy@iol.it>]

AFRICANEWS - News and Views on Africa from Africa
Issue 54 - September 2000
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Zimbabwe
More people turn to traditional medicine

To find relief from HIV/AIDS and other ailments, Zimbabweans are
seeking out traditional medical treatments because their health-care
system is unable to help them.

Health
by Rodrick Mukumbira

Zimbabweans are turning to traditional healers to relieve various
HIV/AIDS ailments as Zimbabwe's health care system fails to cope with
the country's medical needs.

Over the past decade, Zimbabwe's health care system has come under
immense pressure, largely due to crippling financial constraints. When
Zimbabwe adopted Western-prescribed economic reforms in 1991, the
government reduced funding to the health sector, resulting in an
exodus of qualified personal and shortage of essential medical drugs.
It has also become expensive for the ordinary person to afford
hospital fees.

With the advent of HIV, an increasing number of people are seeking
traditional remedies for various aliments such as cancers, ulcers,
rheumatics, malaria, infertility, and AIDS-related disease such as
tuberculosis, after having failed to be healed by the hospitals.

"There is no doubt that the use of traditional medicine has increased
over the past few years,"  says Peter Sibanda, secretary of public
relations and culture for the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers
Association (ZINATHA), an organisation that represents 50,000
traditional healers and herbalists. "Even the so-called affluent
people, who in the past scoffed at traditional healers, now drive
their posh cars to consult traditional doctors at night."

Sibanda says that members of his association do not normally demand
money from patients but accept promissory payment.  This payment,
according to Sibanda, can be in "cash or kind."

"We don't select or discriminate on patients," says Sibanda.
"Sometimes we don't charge at all. If someone comes without money to
me and I heal the ailments, my popularity will increase. He would
invite 10 or more people to come for my services. That way, I will
make more than what I was going to get from the first patient."

ZINATHA says it has identified a number of medicinal plants, which are
successfully being used as treatments for symptoms related to AIDS.
However, Sibanda stresses that the organisation has not yet found a
cure for AIDS. What it has only managed to do is to prolong the life
of someone infected with AIDS.

But practitioners of traditional medicine say Zimbabwe's health
authorities are suppressing attempts to use natural medicines in the
fight against AIDS because of an "Euro-centric approach" to medicine.

"The government would save lives by supporting research and
propagating the use of African medicines," says Dr. Richard Ngwenya, a
retired army medic who claims he has found a natural remedy to cure
AIDS and has been running a traditional clinic since 1997.
"Traditional medicine is cheaper than the drugs produced by Western
countries."

Ngwenya says it costs an AIDS patient an average of Z$40,000 (approx.
US$ 1,052) a month to purchase imported antiretroviral drugs versus
Z$700 (approx. US$19) for natural remedies developed by traditional
healers in conjunction with the University of Zimbabwe's
pharmacological studies department.

"In traditional medicine we use a combination of herbs, vitamins,
minerals and food to treat various chronic conditions," he says. "But
the problem is that people don't appreciate our own scientists and
think that science is only in Europe."

Ngwenya claims he has treated 5,000 people but his method has failed
to gain recognition from the country's health ministry, he says.

Abraham Mkonto, a traditional healer, has everything to show for his
profession. He is the richest man in his village, in terms of the
number of cattle and the size of his homestead. His influence has
spread in the area such that he is the village councillor. Mkonto
claims he has also had an impact in Botswana, South Africa, Zambia,
and others. Once he treated someone from France who had come
specifically to consult a traditional healer.

ZINATHA says it has managed to isolate pharmacologically active
compounds of some plants which, the organisation claims, can be used
to treat sores, coughs, herpes, diarrhea, and pneumonia. Of the 700
medicinal plants that Zimbabwe's Drug Control Council has tested, 95
percent were found to be effective.

The Harare-based Out of Earth Health Centre and Herbal Pharmacy, a
clinic that specialises in traditional and herbal medicine, is doing
similar but unrelated efforts. The clinic, owned by Dr. Dorcas
Manyoro, a medical doctor who specialised in herbal medicine, has
carried out scientific research on traditional and natural medicine.

The clinic's research officer, Elena Tapalova, herself a holder of a
Master of Research and Agricultural Agronomy, says the setting up of
the clinic has been prompted by an increasing number of people turning
to traditional and natural method of treatment. Tapalova says in the
past three years the clinic has been combining traditional and medical
healing, which seems to appeal to people.

The clinic reports that the number of patients visiting the clinic is
increasing every year due to the success it has achieved over the
years.

Lecturer James Duri of the University of Zimbabwe's Department of
Pharmacy in the Faculty of Medicine says the department has been
involved in screening medicinal plants for phytoconstituents and
biological properties. At the same time it is screening the same
plants for antimicrobial, pharmacological, insecticidal, and
toxicological properties.

"The results concluded so far indicate that Zimbabwe has great
potential in the production of essential herbs using traditional
herbs," says Duri, adding that there are a growing number of doctors
turning to the use of traditional medicine. This would also make the
medicine accessible by everyone; even those who would not want to be
diagnosed by traditional healers would only have to approach their
doctors.

However, Zimbabwe's health and child welfare minister Timothy Stamps
accuses traditional healers of snubbing efforts made by government
five years ago to search for herbal remedies to treat HIV/AIDS-related
ailments.

"We worked with traditional healers for 18 months before they
withdrew, saying their medicine was being stolen," he says.
"Unfortunately our laws do not allow them to patent traditional herbs
that grow naturally."

Meanwhile, ZINATHA has set up a company that specialises in
processing, packaging, and distributing traditional medicines to
various centres throughout the country. However, the organisation has
not yet been allowed to sell the medicine in the pharmacies and
chemists but is selling it from its offices throughout the country and
from the surgeries of its members.

Says Tapera Kureva who buys aphrodisiacs from the ZINATHA offices,
"You just walk in and buy what ever you want without any hassles."

But not all those in the medical field support the use of traditional
medicine. "Of all patients suffering from asbestos-related ailments I
have examined, those whose problems have also been attended to by
traditional healers have worsened," says Dr. Kenneth Gumbo, a medical
doctor in a mining town south of Zimbabwe.

"This is probably due to the conditions in which patients are attended
to," he says. "The utensils used to mix the medicine are not
sterilised. The environment is always dirty and polluted because
traditional healers always have one thing or another to burn."

Gumbo argues that traditional healers do not have a mechanism to
determine the medicinal qualities in plants they administer to
patients. "Poisonous or not, plants are prescribed for everything."