By Gilbert Ekezie
Like the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) that oversees medical and dental practice, homeopathic medicine practitioners in Nigeria are demanding that a separate council should be created for them.
A Lagos-based homeopath, Dr. Precious Obinna Godwin Obia, made the demand in Lagos recently while speaking on the importance of homeopathic medicine practice.
He said, though the Federal Government has started giving attention to homeopathic medicine practice in Nigeria by looking into its regulation, as contained in Decree 78 of 1992, which gives power and authority to the MDCN to regulate the practice of homeopathic medicine, it is important that homeopathy is given a separate council or board of its own because its principles of practice are different from that of traditional medicine and other forms of complementary and alternative medicine. So, “homeopaths are not happy to be merged with traditional medicines.”
Obia was hopeful that, with the passing of the TCAM bill into law by the National Assembly, things will change for good and it will upgrade the practice of homeopathy, so that “there will also be proper regulation and recognition.”
Obia, the medical director of Progobia Specialist Homeopathic Medical Clinic, Lagos, explained that pharmaceutical remedies were not easily found in the normal pharmaceutical shops in Nigeria for now because the cost of importation of some of the finished products is high and not easy, so the majority of the homeopaths in Nigeria are practicing what is called electronic homeopathy, which has to do with the use of radionic equipment that have monitors, while some inculcate modern computer technology.
He explained that, with the aid of radionic computers, tests can be conducted on patients with precise results, and then treatment can be given: “Again, preparation in homeopathic electronic medicine is simple and understandable in science. Other forms of homeopathy like classical or orthodox also exist, but not yet in Nigeria.”
Obia noted that some Nigerian doctors who studied homeopathic pharmacy can get their crude drugs from plants, animals and mineral kingdom, potentize them in a homeopathic way manually by titration and polarization. “These are the accurate way through which the drugs can receive potency and power, so that the dosage can be regulated.”
On the discrepancy between homeopathy and orthodox medicine, Obia stressed that, while orthodox medicine deals with the principle of contrary, contraries, correntum (using drugs that have opposite symptoms to treat natural diseases that have opposite symptoms).
“In orthodox medicine, the symptoms of the natural disease and that of the drugs are not exactly alike, they are opposite. But in homeopathy, the symptoms of the natural diseases and that of the artificial diseases, which is the medicine, are similar.