According to the World Health Organization (WHO), traditional medicine has a long history. It is the sum 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 and the prevention, diagnosis, improvement, or treatment of physical and mental illness.
WHO recommends that countries integrate traditional medicine into their national health systems while ensuring that products and practices meet quality, safety, and efficacy standards. The WHO also recommends that consumers are educated and can make informed choices about traditional medicine.
It is believed that more than 80 percent of Ethiopians utilize traditional healing at different times and for different illnesses. The Ethiopian Prof. Aklilu Lemma found a treatment for Schistosomiasis (Bilharzia) from Endod, the Ethiopian endemic plant. Since then, other traditional healers have also cured numerous scientifically incurable diseases and provided services dispersed across the country.
In the rural parts of Ethiopia, most traditional healers have been providing their services freely and are still healing both humans and animals.
However, the sector is currently generating a good income for traditional healers in urban areas through curing numerous diseases. Especially, in Addis Ababa the service demand is growing among the people and numerous service users are traveling long distances (from different parts of the country) to access traditional medicines.
Ustaz Nuru Jemal is a traditional healer based in Addis Ababa. He was born in Southern Gondar in Adis Zemen Town. He studied Plant Science at Gondar University and served in his profession after graduation. His father practiced the utilization of traditional wisdom to heal people for more than 70 years.
Thus, Ustaz Nuru started exercising traditional healing by learning and inheriting from his father when he was a teenager. He has been practicing traditional healing for the past couple of decades.
However, attracted to the traditional healing skills that his father had been exercising during his childhood, he grasped the knowledge and started practicing it.
Currently, Uztaz Nuru is 42 years old and has become a famous traditional healer in Ethiopia. He is the Founder and Manager of Mina Traditional Medicine Center located in Addis Ababa, around Bethel. He strives to harness the wisdom of Ethiopian traditional healing by effectively modernizing his traditional healing knowledge inherited from his father by integrating it with his modern educational achievement.
He aspires to repeat Prof. Aklilu Lemma’s footprint through discovering his own patented cure for diseases from medicinal plants.
Ustaz Nuru Jemal told The Ethiopian Herald that integrating Ethiopian traditional healing with modern medication is important to harness the sector’s potential.
As to him, herbals found in urban areas are not much needed for traditional medicine since the leaves are exposed to vehicle and factory smoke and can be toxic as they attract fumes. Therefore, most Ethiopian traditional healers do not consume plants grown in the urban areas as an input for traditional medicine; thus, collect their medicinal plants from remote areas.
“Fertilizers, pesticides, smoke from manufacturing industries, and vehicles are toxic to be utilized as a traditional healing. Cleanliness is also the core of traditional healing. Thus, traveling far from urban areas is mandatory to collect medicinal plants to ensure its curing potential,” he said.
He believes that there is no incurable disease in traditional healing worldwide unless the medicine is not discovered yet.
He has collected and stored dozens of medicinal plants to be utilized as disease prevention for his clients.
October and November are the proper seasons to collect medicinal plants for traditional medication in Ethiopia, he said.
“Learning scientific education immensely contributed to me to identify how to reforest plants, use it, and understand basic characters.”
Currently, he is also a member of the Ethiopian Traditional Healers Association and serves the Association to strengthen itself and manage the sector effectively. So far, he believes that building the credibility of traditional healing is still a challenge, especially in urban areas.
Though, Ethiopia is blessed with diverse plant species as its climate, soil, and water resources are suitable to grow every medicinal plant species, the country has been generating lower from the sector compared to China, India, and Germany, among other countries. Numerous countries are prioritizing the contributions of traditional medicine and generating a tangible income through exporting traditional medicines.
Therefore, the country will become a proper destination for traditional healing like China and India if pertinent stakeholders work actively regarding developing the sector, he underscored.
All in all, Ethiopian traditional healers meander every forest of the country as well as the Ethio-Sudan, and Ethio-Kenya borders to find medicinal plants that cure various diseases in humans and animals.
Ustaz Nuru mostly collects the medicinal plants he utilized for healing various diseases from the desert areas such as Metema and Quara as well as travel to Afar and other areas to meet his clients’ treatment demands.
In the future, he dreams of exporting Ethiopian traditional medicines like China. This sector is Ethiopia’s intangible heritage and asset that should be developed well and researched more to harness its untapped potential.
Currently, he is working with overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers and local sector experts to modernize the sector. He is contributing his part to promoting Ethiopian traditional healing sectors like the Chinese and Indian healers through utilizing technological advancements.
In sum, WHO also recognizes the diversity of traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine (T&CM) practices across countries of the world and its contribution to health, well-being, people-centered health care, and universal health coverage. Appropriately, integrated T&CM can improve health outcomes by increasing the availability of services, especially at the level of primary health care. Many countries have a long history of traditional medicine and practitioners that are important in providing care to populations, and WHO recognizes that traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine has many benefits.
BY TEWODROS KASSA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2024
