Capacity buildings of traditional medicine practitioners as a primary health care workers in Gondar town, Northwest Ethiopia

International Conference and Exhibition on Traditional & Alternative Medicine

December 09-11, 2013 Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel, Hyderabad, India

Abyot Endale, Zewdu Birhanu, Tefera Abula, Mohammedberhan A. Wahib and Mulugeta Fente

Accepted Abstracts: Altern Integ Med

Abstract :

Background: Traditional medicine has a crucial role in building the health system in developing country. The World Health Organization also recognized traditional medicine as a vital health-care resource in developing countries and has encouraged governments to adopt policies to officially acknowledge and regulate the practice of traditional medicine. Moreover, many of the pharmaceutical products used in modern medicine, have directly or indirectly derived from the knowledge of traditional medicine. However, in many countries, including Ethiopia, there is a critical lack of cooperation between conventional and traditional medicine practitioners. Objective: This project was aimed to enhance the capacity of traditional health practitioners? as primary health workers in the aforementioned town for the betterment of quality services to the community. Methodology: As the project was new, we were used participatory methods. Prior to actual training, half day sensitization meeting was held with respective stake holders (Practitioners? leaders and representatives, the woreda and zonal health administrators) to design the appropriate training delivery and optimal training time. The training was therefore carried out based on the feedback and discussion with stake holders. Result: A total of 28 traditional health practitioners?, were trained for five consecutive days, from May 08 to 12, 2013. During these days, topics such as global situation of traditional medicine, methods of preparing herbal potion in standardized way, cultivation and sustainable use of medicinal plants, acquisition of traditional medical knowledge, HIV care and prevention, handling and referring of patients, regulation and ethics in traditional medicine were intensively discussed. Almost all trainees were actively engaged, and reflected different opinions and ideas during discussions. Apart from the training, mortar and pestle and measuring cylinder was also given for each trainee. Conclusion: The practitioners? are eager to adopt standard methods and are willing to collaborate with modern medicine. It is therefore desirable to extend such type of project nationally for better health care of our community.

Biography :

Abyot Endale has completed his M.Sc. in Pharmacognosy in 2012 at Addis Ababa University and his B.Pharm. in 2007 from University of Gondar. Currently, he is Lecturer of Pharmacognosy and head of the department of Pharmacognosy. He is also the main coordinator of Capacity building training for traditional healers. He has published his finding in reputed journals.