Bert Wilkinson
GEORGETOWN, Aug 30 2007 (IPS) – A quiet but perhaps long overdue debate is taking place in this small English-speaking South American republic over the growing power and influence alternative medical practitioners, some of whom have recently been forced to officially back away from claims about special powers to heal everything from HIV/AIDS to various forms of cancer.
But while members of the Guyana Association of Alternative Medicine (GAM) recently concurred with a health ministry statement denouncing these more far-fetched claims, the spectacular rise of herbal doctors in recent years remains undisputed.
GAM has about 40 members, but there are dozens of roadside and market vendors selling their own mystery concoctions around the country.
It is not unusual for television viewers to flip to any of the more than a dozen free public channels here to see an herbal doctor plying his or her wares, inviting the sick and infirm to their walk-in clinics to be cleansed and even to publicly testify about the wonders of herbs.
In a country of 750,000 people that is slowly modernising its health system to meet global standards, the rise of alternative practitioners has pushed officialdom into an uneasy co-existence with this relatively new branch that is slowly making inroads in the health sector.
Health Minister Leslie Ramsammy says candidly that the time has come not only to sit down with the sub-sector and look at it holistically, but to also draft modern laws to ensure it operates in the public #39s interest. That is not exactly the case right now.
Related IPS Articles
Some of the herbalists have invoked a divine right to practice and heal people. Others have had two weeks #39 training or have read some literature and started to practice, but it is obvious that we have to do better than that, he said.
The two sides have held a number of meetings in recent weeks, not only to address the issue of misleading advertising but also to discuss the reality of a permanent future for alternative medicine practitioners and recognition that the field will become a key part of the health sector in a few years.
GAM President Harold. E. Peters says that while it is difficult to put a dollar figure on the alternative medicine industry, he personally sees up to 30 patients in the four hours he spends at his clinic on weekdays. Other clinics are known to see and treat even more given their heavy advertising on television.
GAM is currently on a membership drive designed in part to ensure that most practitioners are within its oversight and to guarantee they would get the benefits derived from their current courtship with officialdom and conventional medicine.
For example, the national health insurance scheme does not now recognise our work, so our patients do not get the benefits they deserve. Patients come to us when all else fails, when they have run out of options with conventional medicine. We are glad to receive and treat them if we can, Peters said.
He said joint teams from the association and the ministry are working on draft laws to go before parliament. One requirement would stipulate herbalists selling medicine to clearly list the ingredients in much the same way conventional pharmaceutical firms are mandated to do.
A framework for self-regulation is also being worked out and a lobby is emerging from the health faculty of the University of Guyana to design courses that would properly train and certify alternative practitioners, mostly to satisfy the anxieties of the public.
You see there is a lot if chicanery going on. Some people are being hustled by rank criminals. It happens in conventional medicine too, so that is in part why we are trying to regularise, Peters said.
He added that the major difference between the two types of medicine has to do with the way treatment is designed. He says that alternative medicine is more geared toward treating the entire body, compared to conventional medicine where capsules are given like bullets to deal with a specific target.
Mechanic Whitmore James, who went to an herbal clinic in July, says his skin rashes disappeared after a few days. I went there after spending a lot of money at drug stores, he told IPS. I believe it works and I believe those clinics are here to stay.
Both Peters and Minister Ramsammy acknowledge a strong herbal tradition in this part of the world going back hundreds of years among all groups in the country, particularly descendants of African slaves and indigenous Amerindians.
Many communities in the deep Amazonian jungles produce and administer their own medicines for illnesses from fevers to snake bites using herbs from trees. The same is true every South American country, but the latest challenge is find the right mix between alternative and conventional medicine in the interest of all.
Even Guyanese who have migrated to the northern climes are known to stock up on supplies while home on vacation, picking up everything from herbal teas to laxatives to potions that allegedly enhance sexual libido or soothe complications from pregnancy.
Vendors openly ply their trade at municipal markets, but it is unclear whether these will also fall under the ambit of new laws and plans to self-regulate.
I do believe that there us a place for alternative medicine in Guyana, but not in the form in which we have it at the moment, says Ramsammy after a recent meeting with GAM. It is a wild, wild west out there that must be regulated.
