Mr. Alfred Kwame Agbesi, NDC Member of Parliament for Ashaiman on Tuesday called on the government to allocate a substantial budgetary allocation for the strengthening of traditional medicine in the country.
He said a substantive Minister of Traditional Medicine should also be appointed to ensure that traditional medicine and healing was used to the benefit of most Ghanaians as a supplement of orthordox Medicine.
Mr. Agbesi who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview on the usefulness of traditional medicine, said the situation where traditional medicine had been neglected was unacceptable considering the fact that if well organized it could benefit a whole lot of people who could not travel to hospitals in urban areas for treatment.
He said a substantive Minister of Traditional Medicine should also be appointed to ensure that traditional medicine and healing was used to the benefit of most Ghanaians as a supplement of orthordox Medicine.
Mr. Agbesi who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview on the usefulness of traditional medicine, said the situation where traditional medicine had been neglected was unacceptable considering the fact that if well organized it could benefit a whole lot of people who could not travel to hospitals in urban areas for treatment.The MP said there was the need to organize the traditional healers according to their areas of specialization such as bone setting, impotence, hypertension and stroke, jaundice and other diseases that were common in the traditional set up.
Mr. Agbesi said governments of China and India made an effort at organizing local practitioners, empowering them financially and today their herbal medicines had flooded markets of both developed and developing countries.
"Much as I am not against orthordox medicine, I want to state categorically here that traditional medicine plays a major role in our health delivery system and therefore needs to be developed as such".
He said if well developed, it could be covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme to serve as an alternative to orthordox medicine and cover people who have to travel several kilometres for treatment in hospitals.
"There are a lot of acupuncture and Massaging clinics which developed over the years in the country through the ingenuity of resident Chinese where a lot of us go to pay heavy sums of money just to be massaged and why can't we develop similar traditional systems in our country". He asked.
Mr. Agbesi further called for the recognition of specialized healing villages so that patients would know where they would receive treatment for diseases that they suffer from in the country.
"I was admitted in a hospital for 12 weeks after breaking my leg, but after all those long weeks of treatment I still had to consult a traditional bonesetter before I was fully treated which sums up what I am telling you
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