Developing the local pharmaceutical industry

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Extract from the article: On 21 November 2023, the Minister of Health and Public Hygiene, Prof. Mijiyawa Mustapha, published a press release denouncing « rogue individuals using traditional medicine as a cover for claiming to cure diabetes with treatments. These treatments ar

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On 21 November 2023, the Minister of Health and Public Hygiene, Prof. Mijiyawa Mustapha, published a press release denouncing « rogue individuals using traditional medicine as a cover for claiming to cure diabetes with treatments. These treatments are out of step with the health code, and are neither validated nor authorised by the relevant departments... ».  At the same time, the main therapist at the centre of the press release was making repeated statements on social networks, challenging the Minister of Health.  As some analysts believe, this event demonstrates the malaise and weaknesses of Togo's health system. It's a closed health system in which there is very little room for endogenous or local solutions in terms of medicines, in the face of the plethora of pathologies that plague the population.

Promoting traditional medicine in Togo

According to the WHO, at least 80% of patients in African countries are treated by traditional therapists.As proof of this, the Ministry of Health, in its documents, still reports low hospital attendance, the phenomenon of people being lost to follow-up and other social realities that do not give people confidence in hospitals.

The situation of traditional medicine in Togo is « calamitous. Practitioners are divided into several clans that clash.Generally speaking, all this disorder in the field is the result of the hostility of practitioners of modern medicine. I say this because it is they who hold the reins of health today. In Togo, the vast majority of health experts, especially academics, are not in favour of the development of alternative health practices », decried Mr Koffi, a member of one of the associations of traditional medicine practitioners in Lomé. 

In pharmacies, when you look for Togolese phytomedicines, it's unanimous: none exist on the shelves. At least not officially.However, in the UEMOA zone, and even in the West African sub-region, efforts are being made in several countries to market phytopharmaceutical products or medicines. Togo is a special case in this area.

Marketing authorisation for phytomedicines

Africa's healthcare systems are heavily dependent on medicines manufactured outside the continent.These drugs, which come out of the big pharmaceutical companies, have a de facto place in the drug distribution chain. « When you look at the approval standards for phytopharmaceutical products or medicines in Togo, they are totally modelled on international standards. The conditions are very onerous, very long, very complex and very expensive. No practitioner of traditional medicine in Togo can meet them », said a Togolese herbalist at a debate in Lomé.

In neighbouring countries, there is a more flexible local system for obtaining marketing authorisation for local healthcare products. As a result, effective plant-based products are now officially available in these countries for the benefit of their populations. This strengthens their health systems.

In 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, the University of Lomé launched an appeal to practitioners of traditional medicine to submit formulas for one or more phytomedicines against the virus.

 But what followed was not to the liking of the phytotherapists. « In a spirit of patriotism, we sent in our formulas. But we weren't involved in the process. We didn't even get the results of the clinical trials that were carried out. We've just heard rumours that certain academics have whispered that our formulas don't live up to expectations », recalled another practitioner of African medicine. 

Healing chronic illnesses

If we have a health system as blocked as Togo's, « the Ministry of Health officials and the medical community as a whole should not be astonished to hear traditional practitioners declare that they can cure one pathology or another.I think this is just the beginning .A number of practitioners will follow later to announce that they have developed a product that completely cures diseases that modern medicine classifies as life-long illnesses », says one analyst.

What is the subject of debate in Togo is seen as a step forward elsewhere in Africa: « In some countries, practitioners of traditional medicine are more virulent. Cures for diabetes, hypertension, cancers, AIDS, Covid, hepatitis, even sickle-cell anaemia.In Togo, the Traditional Medicine Division of the Ministry of Health needs to develop a real framework for promoting practitioners and their products, with the introduction of new texts and approval mechanisms based purely on national realities and needs, and encourage official collaboration between modern and traditional medicine », recommends another practitioner.

For years now, the WHO has been recommending that all countries examine the best way of integrating traditional and complementary medicine into their national health systems. « I invite you to make this meeting the starting point of a global movement to unleash the power of traditional medicine through science and innovation », said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, noting the enormous contributions to human health made by traditional medicine. This statement was made at the opening of a world summit on traditional medicine in August 2023 in India.

Surely it's time for practitioners of conventional medicine to come to terms with reality by accepting that they are not the only ones practising health in our communities.  There are limits that other practices can fill.But to get there, we need to break out of the circle of condemnation, demonisation and denigration and move towards collaborative scientific research. « In any case, I regard the Health Minister's press release as a stone thrown into the sea, which will change nothing.It won't stop people from going to these practitioners, who, according to the testimonies of some patients, give them satisfaction, or even a cure », says a local journalist.

Gamé KOKO