HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 116285,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/116285/?format=api",
"text_counter": 392,
"type": "other",
"speaker_name": "",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "use of herbal medicine. We know that the use of herbal medicine is demonized, especially by the so-called Christians. It is badly misunderstood and associated with a lot of myths and mysteries. At the very worst, it is associated with witchcraft. So, you will find that practitioners of that noble practice fear to come out because of the association with witchcraft. There is time, once we pass this law, for us to look at the issue of witchcraft, because when the white man came to this country, he termed some of the social practices we were involved in witchcraft. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this law must go out of the way because in the School of Medicine, the Professor of pharmacy and Pharmacology was Prof. Arthur Obel, who has a lot of orientation in herbal medicine. I know that even some of the successes he has had in his research in HIV/AIDs, including the drug which he discovered called pal omega and pal indiga, were both based on herbal concoctions. I also remember with a lot of sorrow that in my own village, there was an old woman, the late Veronica Sitiku, who was a fantastic scientist. That was the only human being I knew who, when she was practicing her medicine, she used to attract very many couples to her home and they used to go for herbal concoctions. Whenever they could partake of it, you could find that if they have been getting a series of girls, they could then, in the next birth, get boys. It is a pity that Veronica Sitiku from Busalo village has since died with this knowledge with nobody to follow it. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also know that when we were little boys, and this things goes on in my village, when the Luhya boys go to the stream to fish, they did not have to buy a hook and string; they could just go for herbal preparations which actually anaesthetizes the fish and then the fish goes to sleep and they come on top of the water and the boys could just pick the fish and go home and eat them. This means that this particular herb could be developed as a very friendly anesthetic drug that could be used in theatre, not to forget things that have come to the market and are very popular with elderly members of the society in the name of aphrodisiacs. We know many people have died of taking Viagra, and yet if you go to Kakamega Forest, you will find a particular herb there called Mukobero . When an old man takes Mukobero, he functions very well without having to take Viagra which has a lot of adverse effects. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, while talking about the issue of intellectual property rights, it is important that we appreciate that some herbalists fear to share their knowledge because they do not have protection. They fear that they will lose that knowledge and it will be a loss to them. We could then provide for patenting and an official record of some of this knowledge. There is the issue of what is this that we can do? It is still possible for us to give proper interpretation to the kind of treatment that is given by these people, the surgeries that are provided for, the medical advice and the attendance itself. It is possible for us to give proper interpretation and legislation. It is also possible to provide for the registration of all the herbalists in the country and publish them in a special edition of the Kenya Gazette. We still have time to spell out whether herbalists would practice their medicine in quasi medical institutions and go ahead and provide the guidelines on the kind of costs they can charge people. We can also provide a set of minimum requirements that would have to be attained before somebody must be registered to practice as a herbal medical practitioner. It is possible that a regulatory body, the equivalent of the Kenya Medical"
}