Medicines: Promotion of traditional practices

Natural medicine image

Traditional medicine is the sum total of knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures that are used to maintain health, as well as to prevent, diagnose, improve or treat physical and mental illnesses.

In some Asian and African countries, 80% of the population depend on traditional medicine for primary health care. We also estimate that more than one out of three drugs bought in Africa is containing either no therapeutic substance at all, or a substance whose dose is inadequate.

A study of traditional practices can ensure its perenity among the younger local generations and can help improve traditional treatments’ efficiency and reduce their risks.

Current Research

Our mission is to work towards sustainable improvement of sanitary conditions in the poorest contexts. Through the study of traditional health knowledge, we promote traditional practices and the use of locally-produced medicines.

The research programmes that we support in Switzerland and Mali are studying the effectiveness of the most promising traditional methods, to improve them and produce them locally. They focus on greater community involvement in dealing with their health problems, malaria in particular. In order to achieve concrete, scientifically validated and economically viable proposals, it is essential to mobilize health professionals, those involved in traditional medicine and the people directly concerned.

  • Research in Mali and Switzerland: We have now proved that a plant widely spread in hot countries, Argemone mexicana, is very efficient to heal simple malaria. The original method of selecting local and traditional resources known as ‘reverse pharmacology’ has been shown to be particularly productive, through linkages of traditional medicine and therapeutic research.
  • Another simple technique, the technique of sublingual sugar, is proposed as a life-saving solution for children in the critical state of severe malaria. The results of this study in collaboration with the pediatric ward of the hospital in Sikasso in Mali were released in November 2008 in the Malaria Journal.