A welcome call for regulation

 IT would have been heartening for practitioners and users of traditional or herbal medicine to hear that the Government is taking note of this important but sometimes reviled sector of the public health system.

One must take into account that a large part of ru­ral Papua New Guinea de­pends entirely on her­bal medicine for primary health care even when the Government’s struggling health system is functional.

Statements by Health Sec­retary Pascoe Kase and Prof Prem Rai from UPNG’s School of Medicine at the opening of a workshop in Port Moresby to have traditional medicine regulated are welcome.

Regulation should not on­ly be about controlling and licensing but about ensuring that practitioners are encouraged and helped to ask for support through research and development as well as allow a sharing of ideas from among themselves.

The official government stance on traditional medicine is an acceptance of the fact that Papua New Guinea’s tropical rainforests are indeed bountiful pharmaceutical storehouses. And the passed-down knowledge in the minds of traditional medicine men and women is of such a value that if used well, it can have a major impact on primary health care as well as opening up possibilities of commercialising traditional medicine. 

The time is right to develop some form of regulatory system as part of the National Health Plan for the production and business of traditional herbal medicine, which is increasing rapidly in the country, Kase said.

Papua New Guineans are using traditional knowledge about indigenous plants and even concoct new forms of herbal medicine from exotic species of plants.  Such knowledge needs to be encouraged and refined through the use of modern science. 

“The knowledge of herbal medicine is part of the oral tradition passed on within the family from one generation to another; it needs to be tapped for greater use in health to benefit the communities,” said Kase, alluding to this wealth of knowledge.

Although commonly accepted and used, traditional medicine is sometimes treated with suspicion because of the use of certain medicinal plants and their efficacy is restricted to certain locales and people from outside would feel ill at ease to take them. The use of traditional me­dicine can sometimes be mis­taken or confused with sorcery and witchcraft and that distinction must be established.  

Many tribal peoples look to the plants and animals of tropical forests for their medicinal needs. Through long experience, they have learned that tropical forests can supply a welter of products, not only drugs and pharmaceuticals, but stimulants, narcotics, and hallucinogens among diverse other products that make life more liveable in remote territories. There is a need for an understanding of some of these herbal medicines that can be improved, standardised and made safer and more effective in the treatment of ailments.

The Health Department’s policy to include the safe and effective forms of PNG traditional medicine in primary health care requires research and development. 

Any  regulation must in­clude guidelines for the re­gistration of traditional healers and others of ethical practice and to formulate policies to strengthen the role of traditional medicine.

Traditional knowledge could be recognised as intellectual property and medicinal products produced safely and traded.

Legalised and regulated practice and trade of traditional herbal medicine would obviously create an avenue for cottage industries, a welcome initiative in the government’s drive to promote small and medium enterprises. Traditional medicine is at most times the most cost effective cure for some common sickness and without the knowledge of even some of the readily available herbal cures people are made to spend unnecessarily large sums of money for primary health care.

Most Papua New Guineans today have been led to rely on well-packaged drugs from pharmacies and clinics for even the common cold when their grandparents had simply to pick, pluck or dig the remedy from their backyard or after a short walk into the nearby forest.

Combining modern science and traditional knowledge on the efficacy of some of the plant species, the opportunity is there to make primary health care significantly less expensive but more accessible than it is today.