The National Complementary and Alternative Medical Association (NACAMA) Nigeria has kicked against the call for memoranda and public hearing in respect of a bill for the establishment of Federal College of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine of Nigeria proposed to hold on Monday by the Senate committee on Health.
The National president of the association, professor Peter Emeka Katchy, who disclosed this in Awka, the Anambra state capital, said they were opposed to lumping the two parallel bodies together as Traditional Medicine and Complementary and Alternative Medical Council of Nigeria (TCAMCN) whereas the lawmakers could enact an already draft bill for an act for the establishment of Federal College of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (FEDCAM) which was closed down on October 16, 2010 by the National University Commission (NUC).
“We are vehemently opposed to the traditional medicine being merged with our own because traditional medicine is of parallel relationship with Complementary and Alternative Medical Practice. Both of them are of different content and practice,and should, therefore, not be collapsed into one. Traditional Medicine involves healhcare delivery methods and practice that are directly traceable or related to culture and ancestral heritage of the people.
“Alternative medicine on the other hand refers to the practice of different approaches to management of ailments not typically used in Allopathic Practice-conventional Orthodox Medicine. Complementary and Alternative medical practice are of seamless compatibility mode and their general efficacy has led to thier more frequent combination with conventional medicine,” he said.
According to him, complementary and alternative medicine was given a statutory flavour in Nigeria upon being incorporated into the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria by Decree 78 of 1992, even as NACAMA was formed and registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in 2009 following a letter of recommendation written by the Federal Ministry of Health to the Registrar General of CAC to that effect.
He wondered why the haste to hold public hearing on the bill which has not passed first and second reading, adding that his association was even invited.
Katchy, while suspecting there was something fishy on the move to pass the bill, alleged that although the Federal College of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (FEDCAM) has been shut down, there has been yearly budgetary appropriation to it up to 2020, and two projects were reflected to be on-going in its name.
