FEC approves bill on establishment of traditional, alternative medicines


The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved a bill for the establishment of the National Council for Traditional and Alternative Medicine in Nigeria.Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, made this known while briefing to State House correspondents at the end of a weekly FEC meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari.


He said the bill seeks to take traditional and complementary medicine out of obscurity and institutionalise it.
“The Ministry of health presented a memo on a bill to establish the council for traditional, alternative and complementary medicine practice in Nigeria. This is a memo that 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 like China and India,” he said.
He said the emergence of coronavirus has renewed the call for home grown solutions to public health diseases and value in traditional medicines.


“This is an opportunity with which traditional medicine can be not only upscaled but also regulated because there also areas of malpractice there that can be checked.
“It will also provide the opportunity for the possibility of training, setting up institutions and also being able to research further, in collaboration with the institute of pharmaceutical research of Nigeria, to actually dig out the values that are in our traditional medicine, where they can be used,” he said.

He said the proposed law, when approved, would also help protect the intellectual property of traditional medicine practitioners in the country.

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