The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has urged the media to educate the public on identifying real from dubious traditional and alternative medicine practitioners.
Speaking during a sensitisation seminar for journalists in Dar es Salaam, the Ministry’s Traditional Medicine Section Acting Assistant Director, Dr Paulo Mhame said that there are only 11 registered alternative medicine practitioners in the country.
“Increasingly, the ministry sees more and more practitioners advertise themselves which is contrary to the ethics of our professions as health service providers. Unfortunately the media unconsciously helping out, it is permissible for them to air what they are treating with but giving out their location and contacts is advertising,” he said.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), traditional medicine is the sum total of the knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness.
Alternative medicine on the other hand refers to a broad set of health care practices that are not part of that country’s own tradition and are not integrated into the dominant health care system.
Dr Mhame said that contrary to what many think there were only 11 alternative medicine practitioners and to date 2,221 registered traditional medicine practitioners in the country with 400 more who are due to get their certificates in two weeks’ time.
“When some people come up to claim that they provider alternative medicine and want to be in either a radio or television programme, please scrutinise them by asking proof that they are higher education qualification than Standard Seven and a certification from an institution that teaches the practice in a lecture room, if these are not there, they are not genuine,” he said.
He urged the public to use common sense when prescribed with traditional medicine drugs, citing that for any drug in liquid form shouldn’t exceed half a litre and 100g for medicine in powdered form.
“Any one given say five litres of a drug should think twice about the truthfulness of the practitioner and any onedrug that is said to cure more than three ailments should rise questions,” he said.
Dr Mhame said that a lot of traditional healers were misguiding the public by advertising products that don’t people and though the government was doing everything it can to curb this growing problem, it needed all stakeholders on board to effective do the job.
He explained that health services providers are known by word of mouth for the standard of service that the facility provides adding that the future plans of the ministry’s unit is to ensure that all traditional practitioners take heed to hygiene, clean environment and wearing of white uniforms.
By MASEMBE TAMBWE, Tanzania Daily News