Free Trade!
The Author, Dr. Kofi Dankyi Beeko, MD.
From my office, which abuts a relatively busy road by local standards, I am frequently 'entertained' by, or with, for want of a better word, the disturbing yells from 'drug-peddlers', who drudge down a street that abuts the walls which enclose the compound housing the office.
I must use the word 'drudge', because these fellows ride in vehicles that make me wonder if they too must visit the road-worthiness office on a yearly basis, as the law orders we do.
Even though it is 'just twice a week' that I must tolerate this 'odious visitation', the effect of the last one doesn't wear off completely before you get acoustically ruffled by the next.
The concoctions they offer over the loudest loudspeakers I have ever heard anyone speak out of, are supposed to cure virtually everything by way of ailment that the devil could have made to punish mankind with.
At one time, I mentally counted over fifteen diseases, or conditions that would supposedly be cured if you imbibed what they were offering, 'in the name of the Lord.'
You were also urged to hurry, or you might be too late. On one such occasion, I just stole a 'peep', and let me spare everybody the morph of the caricatures and inscriptions I had to abuse my eyes with, on some van.
In ancient Greece, the mythology talked of Aesculapius, who was the God in charge of healing. The Romans later called the same Aesculap.
It is the same name that, today, sits on the famous German instrument manufacturer for surgical practice, and allied fields. Among the children of Aeculap was a daughter by the name of (Panaceia) Panacea, who was assigned the duty of taking away all states of pain, or discomfort.
Going by that, the vendors of the medicines I so often must hear of, definitely, are conversant with Greek Mythology. All well and good!
A concoction supposedly exists for the care of the feared chronic disease condition, 'diabetes mellitus'. You enter a van, and you give a sample of your urine, and it is with sugar, so typical of this particular disease.
You receive 'a dose of the panacea', and moments thereafter, your urine is free of sugar, and you are pronounced cured of the disease called, diabetes mellitus.
Sugar in your blood is not tested for.
If you harbour any inkling of sarcasm, you could say that you would be envious of anybody capable of this art of healing. Anybody who has tried to go the official way of the authorities that should allow someone the right to practice medicine would attest to the truism, that the Republic of Ghana has some of the most rigid regulations to practice medicine, compared to the rest of the world!!
That is no exaggeration. If there are people that I cannot envy at all, they must truly be those responsible for trying to bring some sanity into the way drugs are produced, imported, and/or marketed in our Republic.
All this has been complicated by a system de novo, namely, 'alternative Medicine.' If you try to understand it the way it seems to work in our Motherland, the impression you get is: Anything that is not like what the medical student learned under a conventional system, can go under that umbrella. Anything that is supposed to heal, 'passes', so it seems.
You could raise the question; 'So, where do you draw the line?' Like in the realm of the worship of God, the sky is the limit. You have a population of 23 million citizens, and for that, equally 23 million arts of healing and worship.
That seems to work, all under the rubric, 'alternative Religion cum medici.' But, no need to rush, or panic.
The Crown Prince of England was a staunch believer in Homeopathy, until he sustained a fractured arm in a Skiing accident decades ago! On that occasion with the fractured arm, he preferred care of the Orthopedic Surgeon.
There is room in the rest of the world for what recently has been dubbed alternative medicine. The problem, however, obtains this way:
No matter how selective you may want to be in choosing a radio station in our country, you may need to switch off now and again, if you understand a little bit of conventional medicine, when it comes to advertising 'matters of alternative medicine.' If you were a Surgeon, or Physician Specialist', you are not allowed to advertise in a similar way the 'herbalist' is allowed to.
Whom should it surprise, when there is such a high mortality rate in most disease entities which finally, must get to see the man who trained under the guidelines of Galen, or Herophilos von Khalkadon, or any of the numerous Hellenistic Pillars that have stood up over the Millennia, and were bastions upon which healthcare provision rests today, even if now and again there is the need to look at it again, the way we deliver it?'
Breakthroughs in medicine have served us well. Examples are, the discovery of Penicillin by Alexander Fleming (the Scottish Surgeon/Scientist), whose merits helped reduce the infection rate, and hence mortality of wounded soldiers in the trenches, (1939-45), as compared to during the first World War, 1914-18.
He shared the Nobel Prize for Bacteriology and Physiology in 1945. Look at the difference that the British and American Scientists, Watson & Crick, have made on their structure of DNA, and its subsequent application in medicine, leading to detection of Genes that diseases such as Alzheimer's, and its application, in possible prevention through genetic manipulation.
Let's cut the list short by just adding Organ transplantations, and the recent possible improvement through Stem-Cell Technology.
Medicine that for the first time since millennia has prolonged our life-span since the last Century to one hundred years and beyond, IS SCIENCE, AND NOT HOCUS POCUS.