Need of a Platform for Traditional Healers and Their Knowledge

Over 90% of tribal population in two tribal pocket of India i.e. Patalkot and Dangs; depends on traditional medical practices for day to day health care. Dang and Patalkot are two remote areas in India where traditional herbal practices are performed on a large scale. The herbal practitioners are called as Bhagats (in Dang) and Bhumkas (in Patalkot). These healers are expert in curing range of human health disorders with the help of medicinal plants growing in their respective regions. This knowledge of herbs and their uses has been passed from generation to generations. Young generations from these tribal groups are merely interested in knowing the secrets of medicinal plants. They are now influenced by the modern world and they think that they can earn more money by doing labour work at farms or working as a waiter in any hotel. Indeed, it is true that herbal healers are not paid enough for the creative and curative services they do for the society. The new generation doesn’t know the potential of knowledge of their elderly. Healers too are also not much interested in sharing their knowledge with the new generation. They want to transfer this knowledge to safe hands so that the knowledge is safeguarded and should be used for the welfare of the society [1].

It is in fact a need of the hour to establish a Traditional Medicine Centre in these areas as to monitor and promote the collection of herbs from the Bhagats and Bhumkas through the research agencies/ companies or other institutions. Though, there is a Bhagat Mandali (Healer’s Organization) in Dangs but such sort of organization is not mobilized in Patalkot. Government and research organizations, NGOs, should come forward to take the job of scientific documentation and validation of tribal’s traditional knowledge. There is a greater need to make a pool of traditional healers to offer health care support to the majority of rural people who are poor and can’t afford costly allopathic drugs. It is important to note that these healers are known as “Good Man” in the tribal society because they live and practice within the community [2]. Hence, their services could be quite beneficial to the tribal society. The herbs which are used as medicines by the healers generally occur in the nature and can be obtained cheaply. As a backward integration, tribals should be promoted for the cultivation of medicinal plants. For instance, a company comes up with an indigenous knowledge based product (giving reward to the knowledge holder); they would require raw herbal material in large quantity. For this, tribal groups can be formed and encouraged for the cultivation of such needed material. This will provide them with an open market of herbs and also this ex situ conservation of medicinal plant will support forest and medicinal herb conservational activities. Now, there is a necessity for ethnobotanists, phytochemists, pharmacognosists, scientists, biotechnologists, herbal healers, policy makers, financial institutions and other bodies to come together on a single platform. This will lead an exchange of ideas and information that will help in the realistic execution of traditional knowledge.

A network of traditional botanical knowledge, herbs and healers should be incorporated to collect traditional knowledge from other countries. This will help in exchanging and sharing knowledge based herbal practices among the traditional healers. An International Digital Data Bank of Traditional Knowledge should be prepared and made accessible to all of them. For this, fellows from modern science can take the initiative for dialogue, exchange of ideas and imparting its knowledge and skills to traditional healers.

The Government should review the act and all laws that suppress the development of traditional medicine. Financial assistance should be given to the poor healers. They should be given with mixer, rotator or extractors and other equipments to collect and prepare the traditional medicines. We must consider the role of the new generation of healers. They should be promoted to get trained, examined and certified by the modern research. There has been a great deal of suspicion, secrecy and hostilities existing between traditional healers and modern doctors, it is need of the hour to promote the dialogue in between these two to destroy it [3]. We need to strengthen training and research on traditional medicine, and start with the most readily feasible herbal remedies. We should boost our national economies by joining forces in preventive, community, and productive health care for our people.

To achieve these objectives and those of health for all by the year 2010 and thereafter, open heart dialogue between the two disciplines of medicines is a must. For neither allopathic nor traditional medicine alone can adequately meet the health needs of our nations.

1]. Acharya, D. 2002. Few traditional and popular medicinal plants, In: Write-up of Training-cum-workshop on Medicinal Plants: Conservation and Cultivation (Jan 15th, 2002) Department of Botany, Danielson College, Chhindwara. pp 22-37.

2]. Acharya, Deepak and Sancheti, Garima. 2005. Indian culinary herbs and their traditional uses. The Essential Herbal, Nov/ Dec: 9-13.

3]. Traditional Medicinal Plants (Dar Es Salaam University Press - Ministry of Health - Tanzania, 1991, 391 p.