The Sunday Mail
Jinda Mutinhima
RECENTLY, there was a lively debate in Parliament and it grabbed the attention of traditional healers.
The debate centred on a report that was tabled by a delegation to the ninth Stop Cervical, Breast and Prostate Cancer in Africa Conference which was held in July in Nairobi, Kenya.
In introducing her motion, chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health and Child Care to the Nairobi conference, Ruth Labode tabled a recommendation that the Ministry of Health and Child Care increase access to early cancer screening of people through provision of mobile clinics and health education, particularly for rural communities.
She also recommended that district hospitals’ staff be trained in basic methods of screening and treating cancer. Other suggestions by the Health committee were that by the end of September 2015, the Ministry of Health and Child Care must distribute three mobile clinics per province. These are to be purchased through a $100 million loan facility from China. Members of Parliament were also encouraged to take an interest in lobbying Government and international partners to give more focus on cancer control and treatment by forming a Parliamentary lobby group.
This debate prompted me to revisit the role of traditional healers and faith healers in the treatment and prevention of cancer.
Since time immemorial, traditional healers have been the source of healing among communities the world over and according to the United Nations, about 80 percent of the population in Asia and Africa still consult traditional healers.
Cancer, or gomarara in Shona is a disease that is curable if detected early. One can wonder how traditional healers can detect cancer. Traditional healers are pharmacologists who can detect a disease when patients consult them. They can detect the diseases caused by spiritual, hereditary or social factors.
It is at this stage that traditional healers can prescribe medicine for early treatment of cancer.
Long back, it was easier to detect cancer because back then, almost every person would consult the traditional healers as the African religion was almost the universal religion on the continent.
African traditional healing understands that cancer is a disease that emanates from the creeping of cells, which in Shona is called kudura.
Thus the creeping cells should be flushed out as excreta or urine. During the early years of a person’s life, normal cells divide more rapidly until the person becomes an adult.
After that, cells in most parts of the body divide only to replace worn-out or dying cells and to repair injuries. Instead of dying, they outlive normal cells and continue to form new abnormal cells causing cancer.
Thus after reaching a diagnosis through spiritual means, herbal and dietary remedies are prescribed on the patient so that he or she is able to flush out the rogue cells building up in the blood as cancer tumours.
To buttress our argument that herbal medicines can cure cancer if detected early, research conducted by Victor Keute of the University of Dschang in Cameroon and Thomas Efferth of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany found out that plants contain compounds that kill cancer cells.
“The active substances present in African medicinal plants may be capable of killing off tumour cells that are resistant to more than one drug,” Efferth said.
“They thus represent an excellent starting point for the development of new therapeutic treatments for cancers that do not respond to conventional chemotherapy regimens.”
Efferth and Kuete have been collaborating together for four years, investigating traditional African medicinal plants including the Ethiopian pepper, giant globe thistle, speargrass and wild pepper. So far, they have tested a total of more than 100 plants and spices in search of cytotoxic (cancer-killing) effects.
Promisingly, they have already uncovered at least four naturally occurring chemicals in the family known as the benzophenones that are effective at preventing the proliferation of cancer cells, including multi-drug resistant varieties.
The use of herbal medicine might look backward to some but it is very much widely used around the world, including in the developed countries.
In the European Union, herbal medicines are now regulated under the European Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products. In the United States, herbal remedies are regulated dietary supplements by the Food and Drug Administration under current good manufacturing practice (GMP) policy for dietary supplements.
In India, herbal remedies are so popular that the government of India has created a separate department (AYUSH) under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the use of medicinal plants dates at least to the Paleolithic, approximately 60,000 years ago.
The use of herbal remedies is more prevalent in patients with chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, asthma and end-stage renal disease. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 80 percent of the population of some Asian and African countries presently use herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care.
In light of this cancer scourge, our call as traditional healers is for strong cooperation between the traditional healers and the western medical practitioners through the Ministry of Health and Child Care.
Traditionally, people used to consult traditional healers freely but the current stigmatisation is forcing some people to consult us nocturnally, doing so irregularly or not consulting us at all such that most cancer cases are detected at advanced stages when they become difficult to treat.
The fact that cancer screening and treatment is centralised in Harare and Bulawayo has not helped matters as the better part of our population is reeling in financial difficulties and therefore find it difficult to go for cancer screening and treatment.
