Estimated $70bn generated
from herbal medicine yearly – Rev. Fr. Adodo
By AZOMA CHIKWE
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
A Catholic monk says that an estimated N8.82 trillion ($70
billion) is generated from herbal medicine yearly worldwide.
He lamented that Africa, which has over 70 percent of the
world reserve of medicinal plants growing in her soil, has
little or no share in this income.
Speaking at a workshop of Herbal Reporters Association of
Nigeria (HEMRAN), Rev. Fr. Anselm Adodo, Co-ordinator of Pax
Herbal Clinic and Research Laboratories, Ewu-Esan, Edo State,
also said that Africa is surrounded by wealth yet the citizens
live in poverty.
In the words of Rev. Fr. Adodo: "The global income from
the herbal medicine business is estimated at $70 billion yearly.
Africa, which has over 70 per cent of the world’s reserve
of medicinal plants growing on her soil, has little or no
share in this income. We are surrounded by wealth, yet we
live in poverty. Indeed, poverty is a threat to world peace.
When the gap between the poor and the rich widens, the poor
cannot sleep because they are hungry, and the rich cannot
rest because the poor are awake.
"Knowledge is a common human heritage and the property
of humanity. Civilisation, economic progress and prosperity
are not an exclusive preserve of any race or culture. Knowledge,
which is one of humanity’s great assets, is grossly
under-used in Africa. The number of knowledge workers who
are unemployed, under-employed or misemployed, particularly
among recent university and college graduates, is reported
to be 24-40 per cent in African societies.
"Knowledge is expanding at a staggering rate. The amount
of scientific knowledge, for instance, may be doubling every
ten years. While there were roughly 100 scientific journals
in the year 1800, there are over 100,000 today.
"Practices such as ancestors’ worshiping, veneration,
cult, voodoo and sorcery are signs of knowledge twisted towards
the past instead of towards the future and is not efficient
for our forward-looking modern world. It is knowledge that
is not efficient for innovation, social progress, economic
transformation and knowledge-based sustainable development.
It is knowledge that is detrimental to the transformation
of African medicine into a globally acceptable venture. It
is knowledge that is keeping up to a quarter of Africa constantly
looking backward.
No wonder that many African communities who are relying on
this ancestral knowledge barely move forward or beyond their
immediate environments.
"In many indigenous societies, when a knowledge bearer
dies, his knowledge dies with him. Indeed, a lot of knowledge
is being lost, knowledge that appears to be worthless mainly
because it is not properly valued. There is a need to protect
endangered knowledge as a world heritage.
“Today, we speak of protecting our environment from
abuse, and also about protection of rare species of plants
and animals. But equally important is the need to set up international
efforts to protect and preserve indigenous knowledge. With
every old person that dies in our villages, a whole library
of books is being lost. We must therefore, protect our indigenous
knowledge by re-understanding, re-interpreting, re-examining
and re-expressing it in light of modern scientific knowledge
(exogenous knowledge). This is one of the objectives of PAXHERBALS.
This is also one of the missions of our journal: The Herbal
Doctor: A journal of African medicine."
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