Alternative medicines are the forms of therapy that tend to focus on the fact that the body has the ability to cure itself if it is given the relevant therapy. In some countries, it is traditional medicine such as acupuncture or homeopathy. When such form of healing leaves the shores of that country and go to another country, it becomes alternative medicine. When you use things from nature to effect healing that is what alternative therapy is about. Alternative medicine does not involve surgery, but there are instances where surgery is inevitable. For instance, if you have a loop of the intestine, they curl together. The doctor will need to open up the patient’s intestine and untwist it. For that, you need surgical intervention. Four branches are recognised by the government and the Medical and Dental Council Nigeria (MDCN). These are Chinese Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Naturopathy and Osteopathy.
Let me just say that no area of medicine can stand on its own and profess to have solution to all aspects of healing. However, before now, perception of alternative medicine by Nigerians, not excluding the educated, has contributed largely to relegating it to the background. For instance, people who are practicing traditional or herbal medicine always hide under the guise of being called ‘doctors’ and they perpetrate all forms of atrocity and quackery all in the name of alternative medicine. They tend to classify themselves as practicing alternative therapy. Some of them say they are running centre for alternative and therapy whereas they are not.The fact that somebody is doing herbal medicine and is able to amass one or two equipments, and he starts calling himself alternative medicine therapist does not make him an alternative medicine practitioner. This would no longer be tolerated, that is why the MDCN has accepted alternative medicine as part of its oversight function and is regulating and registering practitioners of alternative medicine. NACAMA is also out to correct and regulate the practice so that it is only people that are well trained that can be called practitioners of alternative medicine. This is not to say traditional medicine is not effective or recognised. As a matter of fact, the only three arms of medicine recognised by the government are the orthodox which is been domiciled by NMA, alternative medicine and the third is traditional medicine. It is only because the practitioners of traditional medicine are sort of confused about how to be addressed was probably why they preferred being addressed as Alternative Medical Practitioners rather than herbalists. Could it be that they feel it’s derogatory to be called herbalist, which they are or is it they could not differentiate between a herbalist and a ritualist or what? An herbalist uses herbs to offer healing and that is a proud job across the world, ours should not be different.
What makes the difference between the two?Any practitioner of alternative medicine must go through rigorous academic training. There is a college, Federal College of Alternative Medicine (FEDCAM) in Abuja that has a comprehensive curriculum that is the same with that of other colleges of medicine. I make bold to say the students are even better equipped than those in conventional colleges of medicine in terms of the input of training. Before anyone can go into any aspect of medicine, basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology must be acquired. Though it does not have the status of a university, but it is affiliated to foreign universities that offer the courses. The reason being that there are no universities here in Nigeria that can do that. It must be emphasised, however, that people who want to enrol and study alternative medicine should not see the school as a palliative measure, that is, because you are being rejected by JAMB or you are a never-do-well, the next step is to enrol with the school. No, that is not obtainable. Some of us went to the best universities around the world to read alternative medicine. I am happy to say that the less, medical doctors have come to the realisation that alternative medicine is in a class of its own. We know what they know but they don’t know what we know.
Has the establishment of FEDCAM been able to meet the objectives it was meant to achieve?I must that the introduction of the college for the hospital has been a very good blessing to this country. We have never had it so good. A lot of impressions are being created with what have been done. People are coming here; patients are being referred from conventional hospitals and other leading health institutions across the country and we have been getting tremendous good results. Here we offer detoxification, magnetic healing and several others. Cases that would have required surgery were resolved here without having to go under the knife. Cases of fibroid were resolved with natural therapy. Frankly, the face of alternative therapy is changing in this country and we have the government to thank for that and of course our hardworking Registrar, Dr. Ayodele Akindipe for that effort. Lots of people that have no prior or clear understanding of the concept of alternative medicine are better enlightened now through the regular referrals we get now. Some 10 years ago, when you talk about alternative medicine, a lot of people look at you as if you want to run yourself into a form of clandestine missions. But these days it is not the case because even many medical doctors are now appreciating alternative medicine.
Is there any breakthrough to show for these strides you were so proud of?
Yes, like I said, alternative medicine has been able to deal with some ailments that are hitherto considered incurable since orthodox forms of medication has no solution for them. Solution has been found for diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, hepatitis A and B and so many others and we thank God that here in this our hospital, God has been working wonders as we have been able to fix those ailments. Apart from that, on the issue of HIV/AIDS, I’m happy to tell you that we have an intervention programme we are running for People Living with HIV/AIDS at Epe in Lagos State. We started the programme about some six to seven weeks ago giving people our remedies. We are doing it in collaboration with GHAIN, an international agency that is into diagnosing of HIV/AIDS. We started with GHAIN, people were sent to go and run a test before the commencement of the treatment. They ran the test; we took their viral load and other vital data. Without fear of contradiction, after five to six weeks of treatment, tests were conducted again and majority of those people are no longer HIV positive. This is not a cooked up story as we have documents to back the claims up. We also have the patients on tape and some of them are even willing to talk to the press though we are not ready to go public yet because we are still on clinical trial.
Do you realise the enormity of this claim going by past attempts by some individuals in Nigeria on finding a cure for the disease?Before we embarked on this project, we knew the level of sensitivity of the disease and that is why we have documented facts to back us up. At first, what we tell people when they come here is to go to the National hospital and run a test. They would give us the forecast and after a while the treatment tests are repeated again. That was what we did. We have our laboratory here we don’t run it here, go to a public laboratory. Authoritatively, I am confirming that 75 per cent or 85 per cent of them are now negative based on facts before us. Everything has been perfectly captured and the patients are real.
The Federal Government is aware of this project and everything we do is in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Health, even the Minister of State for Health is aware of the records. When we started the treatment, we discovered that other ailments were taken care of in the course of the treatment. Some of them had some terrible ones that you can even see some of their bones outside but within a few weeks of treatment those things covered up and they are living a normal life. It was fantastic, and apart from that, the remedy works in such a way that other ailments that were not the initial target of our therapy were taken off.To ascertain the efficacy of the therapy, it is our intention to go round the country, as a matter of fact, after Epe, the people at Ikorodu gathered themselves and said it is their turn. Now we are doing the intervention programme for people at Ikorodu. I have to point it out that what we are trying to do in essence is to start from a location for adequate monitoring and evaluation. This will be impossible if we are spread all over the country at the same time. As I said earlier, we are keeping all these documents for reference because HIV/AIDS is a very sensitive issue in this country, even globally. By the time we are set for public disclosure, Nigeria would be making history but we need all the support we can get from the government and other stakeholders when we look at the sensitivity of this subject.
The support we are in dire need of would be in form of funds and goodwill. We need funds to further our research, acquire equipments and other consumables. For now, we have been self-financing ourselves on this project. The patients are not paying; we are not charging them any money. We are using money to buy our remedies, pay for logistics; pay staff, we are doing so many things just to prove a point that alternative medicine is not just about boasting.
Apart from HIV/AIDS we are have remedies for cancer, snake bite, cholera, in fact we wanted to embark on an intervention late last year when cholera was ravaging the northern States but for security reason. What we are saying in essence is, the future of medicine in this country lies in the hands of alternative medicine and that is the truth. What all must come to terms with is that we have to complements our selves and stop pretending we can do everything separately. There are things that the three recognized aspects of medicine can do better and vice versa and this call for the need to integrate as it is done in other parts of the world. When we integrate, it will be for the benefits of the citizenry; it should not be an ego trip, let us see what is good in traditional, alternative and orthodox medicine and merge them together for the good for our people. We don’t need to go far, look at Ghana and see what they are doing. The Ghanaians have been able to package their remedies very well and we can see some of their products in Agege in Lagos. There is a place they called Obe in Accra and it was from there that all their remedies they are taken to Agege. In Agege, one can see so many Ghanaians remedies well packaged and in high demand. We have many remedies than Ghanaians so government should look into it.
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