Sénégal : se soigner par les plantes, comment garantir la qualité des soins ? • FRANCE 24

0:00 And now we move on to our focus for this Saturday evening, which focuses on traditional medicine in Africa. An alternative therapy based on the use of natural products such as plants and ancestral knowledge practiced by healers and traditional practitioners, which continues to be a source of inspiration for millions of people on the continent. In Dakar, for example, phytotherapy and plant-based medicine are used by many therapists to treat various illnesses. This widespread practice has to overcome significant challenges, particularly related to the production of medicines and the lack of official recognition. Report by Amina Tudialo and Sarah Seiko. Nestled in the heart of the urban jungle, the traditional hospital of Kerr-Massar, Mamadou Diouf is finishing a preparation based on Basquia, a plant with anti-inflammatory properties. She is going to inhale

0:49 the preparation and depending on her reaction, I can adapt the treatment. Suffering from a fibroid, this patient refused the operation proposed by her doctor. She turned to this facility 4 months ago for inhalation and foot bath sessions. For the febroma, I still felt that it hurt from time to time. Now, when I started the treatment, I can see that the pain has also decreased a lot. The patient is not left to her own devices. She is monitored here. For example, given her reactions, I know that the treatment is not over. A plant therapy, most of which comes from the institute's garden. More than 200 species are listed there and are used to treat dermatoses, hemorrhoids or even hypertension. There are limits to everything, and we

1:36 are also very aware of our limits. For example, if you have a person who is seriously injured and really needs an operation, we would not take that patient. Traditional medicine is tolerated in Senegal, but it is not officially recognized. The medical association even considers it a dangerous practice. Many patients who suffer from chronic insane today, as you can see in their therapeutic journey, there is this notion of taking decoctions or traditional medicines. The first step in relation to the sector, as we do, is to have regulations. At the Charenta-Diab University in Dakar, a laboratory is already dedicated to the study of plants. Its goal is to develop medicines that can be approved by the authorities, which

2:24 would be a first in Senegal. It is possible to do so through plants, but all the necessary research must be done. Activity research to show that the plant is active, chemical research to determine its chemical composition, but also toxicity research to see that the plant does not have toxic activity in humans or animals. Since 2023, a first step has been taken with the adoption of a law that plans to officially list the country's medicinal plants. And we'll go a little further on the subject of the challenges of traditional medicine in Africa, an ancestral practice that was long discredited, particularly during the colonial period, and some players in so-called modern medicine are working to rehabilitate it. To discuss this, we're joined in conakry by Mamadou Al-Ubalda,

3:12 Professor Emeritus and Associate Pharmacist of Pharmacology. Thank you for being our guest, Professor Mamadou Bald. What are the main factors that explain the trust and enthusiasm of African populations for traditional medicine, and how can we capitalize on this acceptance to improve access to care in rural areas? In Guinea, a long time ago, after independence, an important decision was made to rehabilitate African cultural values. Traditional medicine was given pride of place, but it wasn't until the 1970s that universities

4:01 and research institutions, which were created for this purpose, began to undertake basic research into traditional medicine and plants in general. Otherwise, the political will has always existed, of course, a little bit with the change of regimes. But in any case, even today, traditional medicine is in the spotlight, and it is for these reasons that institutes and institutions have been created and are working towards this goal, to promote it. And while there is still time, because today we are faced with a more or

4:47 less serious situation, insofar as intensive urbanization, bushfires, in fact, the overall human impact is not in favor of safeguarding biodiversity, And of course, in turn, traditional medicine is empathetic. . Professor Bald, we can hear you, and while preparing this program, you talked about transmission. How can we improve the transmission of this ancestral know-how that could be lost? In fact, we have already tried, at university level, to introduce the teaching of traditional medicine with its advantages and disadvantages.

5:35 In pharmacy departments, it has been taught for decades, but the main problem is mainly with doctors because they are the ones who actually prescribe. And here, too, Modules have been created to try to introduce them to the concept of traditional medicine, because, generally speaking, trained in Western medicine, they tend to oppose the use of, the integration of, this traditional medicine into healthcare. But obviously, this is changing more recently because here we have developed the concept of

6:21 ethnotherapy, which gives conventional doctors an opportunity to verify the therapeutic quality of one of their recipes with traditional practitioners. And this is generally done in the social environment of the traditional therapist. This is what we call ethnotherapy. And it is an opportunity for conventional doctors to evolve with traditional doctors. On the one hand, and then, on the other hand, it also allows the doctor, the practicing translator, to realize his or her limits, because when it works, he or she knows it, and when it doesn't, he or she is aware of it. And it's visible there, he or she understands a lot. He or she knows it too. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Mamadou Aloubald, Emeritus Sister

7:08 Professor and Pharmacist in Conakry.