Medicinal herbs or traditional medicine has been utilized in all civilizations. A large proportion of the population in Rwanda still uses traditional medicinal plants in order to meet healthcare needs.

Some people in rural settings still rely on herbal medicine to treat sickness and one of the commonest herbal plants commonly used is ‘Umubirizi’ scientifically known as veronica amygdalina that is used to treat malaria.

The World Health Organisation reported that 90 per cent of people in Ethiopia, Benin, Rwanda and Tanzania (Africa) still use herbal medicine to meet their primary healthcare needs and recognised its importance by encouraging herbal medicine albeit with a scientific approach.

Rwanda’s health ministry has taken the initiative to conserve herbal medicine. Traditional healers and doctors also now have an organisation with 3,000 registered members, as well as saving the dwindling medicinal plant species from extinction. The Ministry already identified close to 50 plant species that need urgent preservation.

According to AGA Rwanda Network, an association of traditional healers, the association carried out a research which revealed that over 700 medicinal plant species are in danger of extinction.

To this end, AGA Rwanda Network is seeking Rwf416 million to implement a project aimed at restoring those endangered medicinal plants in the country.

Dr Raymond Muganga, a pharmacy lecturer at University of Rwanda’s department of medicine and pharmacy, who is also a representative of National Pharmacy Council, says traditional knowledge of healing diseases is a technique that should be transferred to the younger generation.

"My grandfather was a traditional healer. Unfortunately, he died without showing the healing secrets to any of his children which for me is a great loss. May be that knowledge would have helped me as an added skill in my profession as a pharmacist,” he says. What the Ministry is doing to conserve traditional medicine

Dr Théophille Dushime, the in-charge of General Clinical Services in the Ministry of Health, clarifies that traditional healing is recognised by the ministry.

"We will follow up on such medicines to know how they work and then to see the contribution of traditional medicine in healthcare. We can also stop importing medicines after we have realised that such local medicines have efficacy to heal Rwandans,” he says.

Dushime adds that an institute of traditional healers will be set up and its major targets will be to follow up on their discipline and offer checks to their work.

On endangered medicinal plants, he says a joint collaboration between the Ministry of Health with other institutions such as Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA), and researchers will identify all medicinal plants countrywide for preservation and also plant new ones to be used in manufacturing medicine locally.

Daniel Gafaranga, the president of AGA Rwanda Network, says traditional healing heritage should be preserved, noting that more efforts should be put in transferring skills in this therapy from parents (elders) to children.

"We need to double and combine efforts to restore some medicinal plants which are endangered and recognise that traditional medicine should be included and integrated in our health programme,” he says.

Gafaranga says over 60 per cent of the health budget is allocated to medical research and advised traditional healers to play a part in conservation of the declining medicinal plants.

"We can get a solution by seeking all information from traditional healers and try to re-plant such herbs which are endangered, because when the medicine disappears it is hard to regain it. It is an important natural resource for our health,” he says.

Herbalists speak out

Jeremy Nkusi, a chemist, herbalist and proprietor of the New healing Hope Hospital, told Healthy Times that although modern medicine is scientifically tested, traditional herbs are powerful too.

He says conditions like asthma, amoeba, hepatitis and obesity can’t easily be treated by modern medicine, yet patients with these chronic diseases can be sorted better using herbal medicine since it has no cumulative repercussions or side effects.

Jean Damascene Nsanzimana, a traditional herbalist and doctor at Eden Business Centre Limited based in Gatenga, Kigali, says traditional herbs have no chemical preservatives and can act as foods and medicine at the same time when patients consume them.

He emphasises that overdose is one of the major effects of the modern medicine that triggers diseases like liver infection.

Citing different kinds of therapies like use of inclusive phytotherapy (the use of extracts of natural origin as medicine) and use of nutritious foods as treatments (deontotherapy), Nsanzimana says it shows that herbal medicine is relevant in the contemporary world.

Common local medicinal plants

Nkusi cites some of the commonest traditional herbs as ginger (Tangawizi), Ortie large (Igisura) and cinchona tree leaves (Umubirizi). Other known medicinal plants are Basilio and Ginkgo.

"However, the common foods we eat like orange, avocado and sugarcane are the ‘medicines’ we use to treat diseases, especially those that arise out of malnutrition like scurvy and kwashiorkor,” he says.

He says avocado is among the best ‘medicine’ to use to regulate the amount of cholesterol in the body, while cinchona tree and Grande Ortes’ can be used to treat malaria.