By: Nyima Sillah
Lawrence Adefemi, a Nigerian herbalist has said the field of herbal studies has been suppressed because it is under a certain field, saying the field is under-developed in Africa.
Adefemi, the Chief Executive Officer of FekomiHerbals Company, made the statement during panel discussion at the Global Leaders’ Summit held at the Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara Conference Centre.
He made a strong case for people to dig into herbal medicine in Africa.
“When you bring it out then people will develop interest, they will go to school, get certified, and bring it back to society. The herbal medicine field is under-developed in Africa and is yet in doubt,” he said.
He disclosed that there are so many things that herbs can do, stressing that if there should be training or setting the standard that is going to put the herbal medicine in the forefront, the first thing to do is to institutionalize the field properly.
“There should be a department of herbal medicine in institutions. When you go to Harvard University you see the department of pharmacy, medicine, and surgery so I see no reason why you cannot have herbal medicine as an independent field,” he asserted.
Adefemi pointed out that the pharmaceutical industry is one of the major leading industries across the globe that generates a lot of revenue for any country, adding they came up in packaging and reconditioning people’s minds that taking herbs destroys kidney and liver.
“All these drugs have side effects. Whoever goes to the pharmacy to buy drugs the side effects are written there but because you are not a medical person you don’t know the side effects because they are properly packaged. Herbs do not destroy the kidney or liver is more of a process and quantity. The measurement which I think is one of the setbacks that herbal medicines are facing in Africa,” he added.
According to him ‘’in pharmacology, there is an aspect called pharmacognosy that is the field that studies herbal medicine in this field they try to extract some of the recipes they abstract them from plants, animals, and other natural things, explaining that those recipes are reproduce using synthetic means which is not natural which are later sell out to the people.’’