A Monk's Growing Concern for African Medicine

Principles of Herbal medicine was the focus of an event recently held in Lagos. CHUKWUDI OBI who was there reports that the forum organized by Rev. Father Anselm Adodo's Pax Herbal clinic and laboratories St. Benedict's Monastery, Ewu-Ishan, Edo State, brought stakeholders together to chart a new course for herbal medicine practitioners.

Before the clock ticked 9.am, the venue had already been filled to its capacity with some participants still loitering outside exchanging banters.
The look on their faces betrayed their emotions. The excitement could only be better experienced than imagined.

So, when a couple of minutes later the parley kicked off, everybody was prepared to participate actively.

The reason, being that the issue of the day was crucial to all in attendance.

The forum was the inauguration of Herbal Medicine Reporters' Association of Nigeria (HERMAN).

The event doubled as a workshop where eminent scholars spoke on the "Principles of African Medicine."

The workshop which was put together by Pax Herbal Clinic & Research Laboratories Ltd, St Benedictine Monastery, Ewu, Edo State, had in attendance, herbal practitioners, Pax herbal distributors and journalists.

Everybody who mattered when it comes to herbal and traditional medicine practice was at the venue, the Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency, NNMDA, Victoria Island Lagos, which also provided a platform for some of these practitioners to showcase their products.

In his welcome address, Co-ordinator, Pax Herbal clinic and laboratories Ltd. Fr Anselm Adodo noted that the aim of the workshop is to ensure that journalists from both the print and electronic media are well informed about current happenings in the Nigerian Herbal Medicine Sector.

"Our aim is to keep them abreast of development in the herbal industry, show them the huge potentials of African Medicine in transforming Africa economically, socially, politically and medically and encourage constructive dialogue towards the development of African Medicine," he said.

Adodo further called on journalists to always be vanguards of truth.

According to him, "As journalists, you are first and foremost reporters. Your primary duty is to seek the truth and present it as it is. A good journalist searches for the truth, and expresses it in clear, unambiguous terms. To do this, means that you take risks, for the truth is bitter. It is a fact that many people do not want to hear the truth and do not want others to see and know the truth. As journalists, you have a mandate to search for the truth and say the truth, for the good of humanity, of our society and our future."

"Your profession is one of the most powerful in the world. It is often thought that military might is the most powerful on this planet. But what is military might but ability to destroy the body? Real power lies in the ability to shape opinions, to influence people's minds and to shape the conscience of the nation."

Adodo confirmed that practices like ancestoral worship, voodooism and socery are signs of knowledge twisted towards the past instead of the future.

Fr. Adodo who is also the Editor-in-chief, The Herbal Doctor, a journal of African medicine observed that such practices are not efficient for innovation and, socio economic transformation adding that it is detrimental to the transformation of African medicine into a globally accepted venture.

"It is knowledge that is keeping a quarter of Africa constantly looking backward. No wonder many African communities who are relying on this ancestral knowledge barely move forward or beyond their immediate environments," he said.

The Editor-in-Chief, The Herbal Doctor however stressed the need for protection of the knowledge of old people who he said are repositories of knowledge.
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"In many indigenous societies, when a knowledge bearer dies, his knowledge dies with him. Indeed, a lot of knowledge is being lost, knowledge that appears to be worthless mainly because it is not properly valued. There is a need to protect endangered knowledge as a world heritage.

Today, we speak of protecting our environment from abuse, and also about protection for rare species of plants and animals.

But equally important is the need to set up international efforts to protect and preserve indigenous knowledge. With every old person that dies in our villages, a whole library of books is lost. We must therefore protect our indigenous knowledge by re-understanding, re-interpreting, re-examining and re-expressing it in the light of modern scientific knowledge," he said.

source;allafrica.com