Ebenage Herbal Production and Consult has launched a six-month training program for its staff and KNUST students, aimed at equipping them with the necessary skills to enhance the production of high-quality herbal medicine for consumption.
This initiative comes after the organization secured a grant from the Ghana Skills Development Fund (GSDF), in collaboration with the World Bank, the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET) and other ministries to support in adequately equipping herbal medicine players with the necessary skills.
Professors and herbal practitioners at the event emphasized the need to promote and project herbal medicine in Ghana, appealing to the government and private institutions to invest in the sector.
The Executive Director of the Centre for Plant Medicine Research, Prof. Alex Asase, debunked claims that herbal medicines are contributing to the recent high cases of kidney diseases, urging the public to disregard such misconceptions.
He emphasized that herbal medicine forms an integral part of Ghana’s healthcare system.
Prof. Asase highlighted, “Herbal medicine is not the cause of most of the kidney diseases we are seeing in the country. Rather, herbal medicine has been part of our cultural heritage, and our ancestors used it for many years without any reports of kidney diseases.”
The founder of Ebenage Herbal Production and Consult, Ebenezer Agyemang, raised concerns about quack herbalists threatening their operations and emphasized that the elimination of such individuals is possible if more people are trained and equipped with the needed skills to produce quality herbal medicine.
He indicated, “The only way to eliminate quacks is to increase the number of those doing the right thing, and that is exactly what we have started doing.”
A professor of pharmaceutics and drug delivery at the School of Science at the University of Greenwich in the United Kingdom, Prof. Joshua Boateng, raised concerns about global chronic diabetic ulcer cases.
He indicated that, according to research, 70% of victims with chronic diabetic ulcers do not survive when it reaches the amputation stage.
He suggested that relying on plants and herbs to develop strong herbal antibiotics to cure diabetic ulcers is the way forward, as existing orthodox antibiotics are not strong enough to kill the bacteria.
Prof. Boateng said, “When you do the five-year survival comparison, it turns out that chronic diabetic ulcer is worse than cancer, especially when you get an amputation. We are not getting new antibiotics that would kill these microorganisms quickly, so we have to go back to the plants where we discovered these antibiotics.”
He added that, “There are millions of compounds in plants that hopefully would be able to address the problem.”
The Head of the Department(HoD) of Herbal Medicine at KNUST, Prof. Isaac Kingsley Amponsah, highlighted the essence of bridging the gap between academia and industry, urging herbal medicine practitioners to work closely and collaboratively with researchers to promote the production of high-quality herbal medicine.
The six-month-long training forms part of activities commemorating the ten-year anniversary of Ebenage Herbal Production and Consult.
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