The Desirability Of Scientific Breakthrough In Nigerian Herbal Medicine

On the 6th of December,  I wrote on our pilgrims in holy land of Israel engaging in purchases so much so that they got distracted from concentrating on spiritual matters that ought to have been their primary concern, but being virtually relegated to secondary concern.

There is another aspect of this distraction which I didn't mention which is closely related to buying and that is selling. Several of the pilgrims came with Aboniki and rob. These two items were being sold to indigenes of Israel particularly the Arabs. I'm not looking at the negative aspect now, but let us look at the positive aspect.
These two items are really in high demand and some our pilgrims brought large quantities which they sold. I actually thought the Arabs were using them to get high and not for medicinal purposes, but when our guide demanded for one and she was given (a highly educated Jew) she testified two days later that Aboniki had cured of cold. I now said to myself why can't we take advantage of this two items on high demand in the Middle East and package them for export. 

Already Aboniki which I have photographed below has been patent and has NAFDAC number. It's a money spinning export if packaged as its sold here in Yola at N300 which I bought for the purpose of this write up, but it's sold at the average price of $3 in Israel. when converted to our local currency it's about N1400. But sadly our medical Doctors have not subjected it to clinical trials to determine its efficacy. Because if they had done so, the Doctors would have been prescribing it in our hospitals. I may be wrong, otherwise I can't explain why some of our effective herbal medicine haven't been incorporated in medical practice in Nigeria. Let me give known examples. 

A lot of Nigerian communities have excelled in providing cure for snake bite. As far back as 1977, I attended a wedding in a village in my community. We were in the house of my uncle when an elderly person was brought to him to treat a case of snake bite. The man leg was swollen and he was unconscious and gasping. He was virtually dead as the poison had spread all over his body. My uncle brought some herbs and applied it on the spot he was bitten. He said in few minutes he would vomit which he did and after about 30 minutes he regained consciousness and few minutes thereafter, my uncle applied some herbs again and the teeth of the snake were removed. Within one hour, the man brought virtually dead, started working. My uncle had since died with this knowledge. 

10 years ago, I had regular bout of typhoid fever. My younger sister made some concoction of of well known leaves which I steamed myself with and took some orally. Within two days, I got well and went back to the laboratory for test and the typhoid result showed negative since then I have not experience bout of typhoid having been doing medical check on regular basis for the past 10 years. My elder brother and another nephew of mine had similar experiences, in fact they were the ones that encouraged me to take the medicine. All of them have been freed from typhoid for above 10 years. My nephew's case was very high and had become chronic, but was cured.

When I took the matter with my personal physician, he said there is no dosage for it. Instead of getting to know the treatment and take up the issue with Nigerian medical Association( NMA) to subject the herbs and concoction to research and determine its efficacy, as usual, our scientists are not interested in this kind of medical or scientific break through that will address our known local diseases peculiar to Africa. Treatment for Snake bite, typhoid fever and others will kill the pharmaceutical markets of our "masters" in the western world. I'm not a medical doctor, but I know the Chinese have incorporated their herbal medicine in their peculiar medical practice and exported same.

I may be wrong, but I'm of the firm conviction that all these well known tropical diseases like malaria that have been killing our people will be gotten rid of if our scientists commit themselves in to thorough researches in herbal medicine.

This is a clarion call for our scientists to do the needful by freeing themselves from mental slavery of sticking to only western medical cure, but to commit themselves to finding lasting solutions to our tropical diseases whose cure could be found in our local environment. This is in addition to doubling efforts on the preventive aspect. The government has a role to play by motivating, encouraging and funding researches on herbal medicine.

By Fenny J. Fwa