A Professor of Pharmacology, Therapeutic and Toxicology at the Faculty of Basic Clinical Sciences, Lagos State University College of Medicine in Ikeja, Adejuwon Adeneye has asked National Universities Commission (NUC) to strongly consider
incorporating the teachings of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine CAM courses into the existing medical degree curricular, especially now that new curricular system is currently being considered for the medical and other undergraduate degree programmes across the Nigerian Universities.
The don who was delivering historic 100th Inaugural Lecture of the Lagos State University titled "Green Medicine:Nature's Gateway To Sustainable Healthcare Delivery In Nigeria on the Ojo main campus of the institution on Tuesday, explained that such introduction of such courses would assist in widening the knowledge of young medical graduates
"Incorporating these courses will help to train, sensitize, and widen the frontiers of knowledge of our young medical graduates on CAM integration"
Prof. Adeneye in his other recommendations, urged NUC as a regulatory body for university education in the country, to establish a minimum benchmark for the Nigerian Colleges of Medicine by encouraging academic and professional degree programmes both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in both CAM and Integrative Medicine to be floated as regular courses
He listed Germany, India, China, Thailand, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil, where CAM has become a pivotal aspect of their healthcare systems.
" These programmes should be established to close the huge gap in the healthcare needs in Nigeria. The Integrative Medicine degree program could also be designed as an intercalated degree programme for conventional academic and professional healthcare degree programs such as Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS/MBChB), Bachelor of Dental Sciences (BDS), and Bachelor of Nursing Sciences (BNSc), etc", the expert further recommended
Establishing such degree programme according to him, will also give room for robust researches into some of our ethnomedical practices and help fine-tune such practices for the health benefits of Nigerians.
He enjoined Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Ibiyemi Ibilola Olatunji-Bello to take advantage of vantage location of the Lagos State University being in commercial nerve centre of Nigeria couple with the support being enjoyed from the Lagos State Government, by taking the lead and establish a foremost Traditional Medicine/CAM Research Centre in Nigeria.
"Indeed, Lagos State University is uniquely endowed with both human and capital resources to take this torch-bearing role in Nigeria,"
"In addition, the CAM courses could generally be Continuing Medical Education (CME) accredited with “High specialization courses”, or “Elective courses” included within the basic teaching of professional programs as practised in the Italian Universities" ,he submitted
The Inaugural lecturer described Herbal medicine or phytotherapy as an age-old tradition practiced globally and involves using whole plants or plant parts (leaves, flowers, fruits, stems, roots, or rhizomes) to maintain the general well-being of an individual.
Globally according to him, 60% of the developed and 80% of the developing and underdeveloped global populations now rely on herbal therapy for their health care needs.
" Of particular interest is Africa, where an estimated 60 -90% of the entire population makes use of phytomedicine in the management of ailments, including non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity, hyperlipidemia, etc., based in part on the availability and affordability of these medicines as compared to popular or conventional biomedicines (Balogun and Ashafa, 2019)"
The don however expressed concern that these herbal medicines are experiencing serious setback blaming it on ill-defined and poorly understood mechanisms of action and standardization
"Many new bioactive drugs isolated from plants having hypoglycemic effects demonstrate antidiabetic activity equal to and sometimes even more potent than known oral hypoglycemic agents such as glibenclamide, and tolbutamide amongst others", he stated
No comments:
Post a Comment