In a bid to strengthen the practice of alternative medicine in Nigeria, the Federal Executive Council, FEC, on Wednesday, approved the Bill for establishment of the Council for Traditional, Alternative and Complementary Medicine Practice in the country.
Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, presented a memo to FEC on a bill to establish a Council for Traditional, Alternative and Complementary Medicine Practice in Nigeria.
The Minister disclosed this after the FEC meeting which was presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The Bill will amongst its several advantages, seeks to protect the intellectual property rights of practitioners who know the medicines.
The Bill also seeks to take traditional and complementary medicine out of obscurity and give it a profile to institutionalise it, as has been done in other countries, particularly China and India, where it has helped to strengthen their health care delivery
The Minister noted that the outbreak of COVID-19 has renewed the call for home-grown solutions to all these public health diseases and to find the value in our traditional medicines.
He noted that this is an opportunity to upscale traditional medicine’s practice, as well as also regulate the practice, as check areas of malpractices.
” It will also provide for the possibility of trainings, setting up institutions and also being able to research further, working with the Institute of Pharmaceutical Research of Nigeria to actually dig out the values that are in our traditional medicines, where they can be used and be used for research.
“My attention was drawn to the fact that property rights are not so easily protected the way we define them, they are defined differently
” But the protection of traditional knowledge is something that can also be established, on which we are going to be discussing with the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, to protect the knowledge that has been accumulated over several generations, which is in the custody of traditional practitioners.
“By and large, this is a memo that meets a lot of demands and serves a lot of purposes”
The Council also approved a National Policy on Plastic Waste Management in Nigeria.
The policy, according to Minister of Environment Muhammad Mahmoud, is to ensure a more environmental friendly approach to plastic production in Nigeria
“Currently, the Federal Ministry of Environment has constructed a number of Plastic Recycling Plants around the country in various States. But that can just be considered as a pilot programme.
“What we want in the end is for the private sector to take control of this and do more”
