Traditional health practitioners from across the continent have met in South Africa (SA) to call for urgent efforts to protect indigenous African medicine and preserve generations of healing knowledge.
The delegates gathered in Polokwane, Limpopo province, for the annual Malombo cultural festival, an event celebrated every September to usher in the traditional new year and changing season. Speaking at the festival, Kenyan traditional healer Dr Bilinga Tendwa highlighted the proven power of medicinal herbs and plants, warning that vital indigenous health knowledge risks fading away unless it is systematically recorded and passed down.
Practitioners urged researchers to work directly with local healers through “citizen science” initiatives, taking traditional remedies into laboratories for scientific testing while giving full credit and legal protection to the original knowledge holders.
–ChannelAfrica–
