Herbal Medicine: 60% of Africans Rely on Traditional Recipes

 Herbal Medicine: 60% of Africans Rely on Traditional Recipes

 Herbal Medicine: 60% of Africans Rely on Traditional Recipes

Hawa Tidu, Herbalist: We've Saved Many Lives in Communities Suffering from Epidemics and Diseases

The use of plants and herbs in medicinal recipes is more associated with women than men in Africa. For centuries, forests and valleys have been a refuge for African women seeking remedies to treat their children and protect them from illnesses and diseases during pregnancy and childbirth, as well as to strengthen the health of their men as they toil daily in remote, scattered villages far from the presence of traditional healers.

African women have made good use of the continent's diverse natural resources, enabling them to obtain various materials and herbs. They have gained experience and skill in using plants to produce effective and rapid medicines.

To this day, herbal medicine continues to be popular in Africa, estimated by experts to be around 60% of the continent's population. Women occupy the largest share of this practice, both as healers and clients. Given the fragility of health systems in African countries, herbal medicine remains the first, and often the only, solution for a large percentage of Africans, especially those isolated in rural areas, a large proportion of whom are women.

Effective Remedies

In Mali, where traditional medicine maintains its prestigious status, Hawa Tidou, a traditional healer, believes that the natural remedies mastered by African women have saved many lives in communities suffering from epidemics, diseases, conflicts, a lack of awareness of health standards, the spread of harmful practices, and a culture of disease denial.

Regarding what most distinguishes African women in the field of herbal medicine and traditional medicine, Hawa told Al Arabiya.net: "Women here possess experience that they have accumulated over time and inherited. They also master the process of harvesting fruits and picking leaves of medicinal plants at the right time, in addition to the precise processing of each ingredient, which makes them experts in natural remedies and traditional medicine."

For 15 years, Hawa has been selling medicinal plants in the market of the capital, Bamako. She has years of experience in herbal medicine, and many healers come to her from other regions to obtain the plants and herbs they need, in addition to her customers, both consumers and market visitors.

Knowledge and Experience

She says that her work is not as easy as many people think. It requires experience, knowledge, and mastery to extract the medicine from the herb. She adds, "After we harvest the plants or buy them from the farmers, we carefully wash them and dry them in the sun. Some of them are ground and carefully packaged, while others remain untouched."

She also adds, "We also prepare recipes by mixing herbs and all-natural ingredients to produce recipes that are useful in treating diseases. This is what distinguishes traditional African medicine, for which the World Health Organization has dedicated a special day in recognition since 2003."

With the proliferation of traditional medicine prescriptions, there is renewed demand in Africa for the integration of traditional care methods and herbal treatments into the pharmaceutical industry, particularly for diseases prevalent in Africa. This is achieved by manufacturing herbal products, making them safer, and transforming them into medicines in their own right.