In Ghana, health care sees traditional and modern medicine solutions work together in an attempt to address a pressing issue. Currently, around 70% of Ghanaians lack sufficient access to health care. This gap becomes even more pronounced in rural areas, where the doctor-to-population ratio drops from one for every 20,000 people to just one for every 100,000 people.

Modern biomedical health care in Ghana is primarily administered through the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which focuses on ensuring the treatment of the nation’s most prevalent illnesses, like HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. This coverage varies considerably by region, clustering around urban centers and leaving entire swaths of rural Ghana, especially northern regions without any access to health care, forcing people to travel long distances. 

Traditional healers step in where modern health care and insurance fail. They never charge in advance, accept small gifts as payment — usually only from those who successfully recover — and serve 80% of rural Ghana at a ratio of one healer for every 200 people. 

Rooted in centuries of accumulated indigenous knowledge and passed along from parent to child, African traditional medicine uses a variety of herbs, plants, animal parts and oils by themselves and in mixtures to treat conditions ranging from sickle-cell anemia to hypertension. In 1999, the discipline formally became the Ghana Federation of Traditional Medicine Practitioners Associations (GHAFTRAM), which provides selected healers with medical IDs and special cards for referring patients to biomedical facilities. 

Folded Arms

These two disciplines are separated not only by their differing methodologies but also by a cloud of miscommunication, prejudice and changing economic circumstances. A 2017 survey of local healers, medical staff and patients in Ghana’s northern region identified a glut of medical staff unfamiliar with local healing practices, values and languages. Biomedical professionals sometimes view traditional medicine as “backward,” a prejudice so acute in some facilities that patients found to have used traditional medicine are turned away. 

The expanding framework of industrial health care and the globalized need for cash also have a way of discouraging young people from pursuing traditional medicine, especially traditional birth attending, largely because they are not lucrative by modern standards, and are governed by a medicinal philosophy couched in selfless community service that considers charging patients for care immoral. For instance, none of the healers interviewed in the 2017 survey made their living through traditional medicine, all of them practicing part-time and surviving by subsistence farming. 

Helping Hands

Despite these problems, there does seem to be a general attitude toward cooperation amongst medical caretakers in Ghana and a sense of the urgent need for integration. Several initiatives are underway to foster this collaboration. Communication and referral between traditional healers and biomedical professionals are supported by the efforts of the Association of Church-Based Development Projects, which distributes mobile phones to traditional healers and birth attendants. GHAFTRAM introduces its healers to the managers of their local hospitals, reaching out to unassociated healers through radio commercials and encouraging them to join and publicly declare their expertise.

An exciting example of this collaboration in action is Enoch Keitu, a young medical herbalist in Ghana who has combined his mother’s training as a traditional birth attendant with his scientific training in herbal medicine at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to ensure Ghanaians have access to quality-assured herbal remedies. His experiences seeing patients die from preventable, often unreported illnesses first inspired him to create a mobile health clinic that provided free health screenings and referrals, as well as herbal medical care at a subsidized rate. 

Then, starting from prototype compounds synthesized in his own kitchen, he gradually built his own production facility for herbal medicines — Kenoch HG Herbal — with a grant from the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program (NEIP) and help from his friend and fellow medical herbalist Edmund Amu. The facility, now operating in the cities of Techiman and Accra, provides herbal remedies certified by Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) for the treatment of bacterial and fungal infections and to strengthen immunity. It also distributes its products to government health clinics and more than 50 pharmacies throughout the country.

Future Unity

The integration of traditional healing with modern biomedical health care represents a tremendous resource for healing in Ghana. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes it as an important step toward universal health coverage and has taken its own steps to ensure that Africans have access to safe and accessible herbal remedies. A total of 40 African nations have already integrated traditional medicine into their health care and legal systems. Given the ongoing trends, there is hope for a future where all Africans have access to care that is accessible and effective.

– John Merino
Photo: Flickr