Decouple herbal medicine from spiritualism - Sheikh Ameen Bonsu

Sheik Dr. Ameen Bonsu, Chief Executive Officer of Ameen Scientific Herbal Clinic has drawn a clear distinction between spiritualism and traditional herbal practice, stressing that the two have nothing in common.

The well acclaimed herbal practitioner says there is nothing absolutely spiritual about traditional medicine and, therefore, the practice whereby some practitioners associated their source of healing to either voodooism or occultism is not true.

He contended that the development has given a bad image to the non-orthodox medicine and is, therefore, calling on the Ghana Federation of Traditional Medical Practitioners (GHAFTRAM) and other agencies to help fight the unfortunate development.

Equally worrying, according to him, is the environment under which some of the practitioners engage in their operations, stressing that this has contributed negatively to the poor image of traditional medicine in the country.

Speaking to The Chronicle in an interview, Sheikh Bonsu, who is also the Proprietor of Ameen Professional College, an institution that trains students in traditional medicine and other allied health disciplines, lamented the worrying trend of increasing proliferation of quack practitioners, who shroud their activities in spiritualism just to deceive their clients.

According to him, traditional medicine, just like orthodox medicine, has nothing secretive about it and that one can acquire the knowledge through formal training in school or through apprenticeship.

“It is worrying when some practitioners tell tales about how they came to acquire their knowledge in traditional medicine. Some say they had it in their dreams, others say they were spiritually bequeathed by their ancestors and what have you, but what I am trying to say is that these are sometimes psychological gimmicks,” he observed.

Sheikh Dr. Ameen, however, pointed out that it is not to say God does not have a hand in the process of healing, explaining that the Supreme Almighty God is the ultimate healer and not the so-called weird spirits which some practitioners allude to.

He said the trees and herbs used for healing patients are not different from that of the scientific methods, except that in the case of the orthodox drugs, certain chemicals are added to the raw trees before final products are obtained.

Sheikh Dr. Bonsu, who has won several awards in traditional medicine, both in Ghana and other parts of the world, reiterated his call for African trees to be protected from extinction and over-exploitation, in order to protect the future of herbal medicine.

He said it was for this that he decided to establish the school to purposely train young students to acquire modern knowledge in herbal medicine. Currently, the school offers courses in Naturopathy, Phytotherapy, Basic Nursing and Homeopathy.