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{
    "id": 116276,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/116276/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 383,
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    "content": "practicing and many types of medicines coming up is because, I guess, it is very difficult for the KEBS to know how to deal with it because they do not have an experience. I do not think they have experts there in addition to the fact that we do not have a law that would regulate it. So, at that level also, we need people who can handle it in addition to just coming up with a law. It is one thing to come up with the regulations, but it is also important, therefore, once we recognize it, to support those of us who have been recognized to be real experts in this field. We should support them commercially through our Constituencies Development Fund (CDF) kitty and other Government programmes. We should support African medical practitioners who have a potential to develop and who can even tell us much more than we know. A lot of these herbal medical practitioners have no support of any kind. They depend on their limited resources. Sometimes, they are only one man, one woman operations and there is no way they can even convince the Government to have access to resources that can get them to expand. So, it is not enough to just regulate the practice, but we need to look at the wider picture and see how we can support that group of people. Education is also critically important. We would need to begin by documenting what is already available. Why is it that we have traditional doctors that have been known to be doing a good job? We need the documentation to tell the Government that we have found these kinds of people in this district and according to people who have gone through them, they are doing a good job. That would be the beginning in terms of beginning to legalize and legitimize the system. In terms of identifying African experts, supporting them and getting them to also be part of the education in schools and universities to spread the word and expound what they know that others do not know in terms of popularizing appropriate, well documented and standardized herbal medicine. The point has been made that there are countries that are way ahead like China. We need to learn not only from what they are doing in that area from those doctors, but also how they have handled it from their traditional state to a modern state to the point where now Chinese medicine is found on the shelves, especially in Asia and Europe. It is extremely common. But to get to that point and to be even accepted in the Western world, it must have been that they have got to certain standards. So, one way of ensuring that we do not have to go through unnecessary expenses is to come up with a team that learns from the procedures and the practices of China as well as the legal mechanisms that make that practice possible. The commercial development of herbal medicines requires that we recognize it in education and ensure that we have a branch in education that supports those who have talent in that area. We should be able to follow it all through from primary, secondary to university and one can do a degree in herbal medicine in our universities. One should also get rewarded for it in terms of subsidization by the Government, facilities and clear incentives to get herbal practitioners to practice and even getting it to be part of agriculture. In many cases, many of our plants and vegetables are medicinal. We need to identify them and see how we can expand that commercially because they will be serving two purposes. First of all, it is nutritional and secondly, it has some possibilities in terms of medical cure. So, agriculture is an area that can be developed quite widely because a lot of these products are also agricultural. By doing that, we will also be supporting the small-scale farmers to not only produce food, but also to produce food that has a medical value."
}