Council closes herbal medicine shops over expired licences

The Traditional Medicine Practice Council (TMPC) has shut down three herbal medicine shops in Cape Coast for operating with expired licences.

The affected facilities are Pennah Herbal Shop, Dank Natural Healthcare and God is Able Herbal Centre.

The closure forms part of a nationwide enforcement exercise aimed at ensuring that herbal medicine practitioners and facilities comply with regulatory requirements and protect consumers from potential health risks.

Speaking to the media during an inspection of herbal medicine facilities in Cape Coast, the TMPC’s Compliance, Enforcement and Inspection Officer, Nicholas Annan, said some of the affected shops had operated with expired licences for three to four years without renewing them.

“We have identified facilities whose licences expired three and four years ago. Although they were previously licensed, they have failed to renew their licences, and we have therefore closed them down,” he said.

Annan explained that the inspections were intended to establish whether herbal medicine operators had valid licences and complied with the regulations governing their activities.

He said the affected operators had been directed to report to the Council’s office to renew their licences before resuming operations.

The Council will also conduct follow-up inspections to verify that the operators have regularised their businesses before the facilities are allowed to reopen.

Annan stressed that the exercise was not intended to frustrate practitioners but to ensure that the traditional medicine industry operated within the required standards.

“The basic thing we are looking at is public health and safety. We want to ensure that everybody in the traditional medicine sector is properly regulated, their licences are up to date, and they are doing the right thing,” he said.

He added that the Council would sustain its monitoring and inspection activities to prevent practitioners from operating with expired licences.

According to him, the enforcement exercise is not a one-off operation, as officers have been deployed to conduct regular inspections and promote compliance with the regulations.

Annan noted that although the current compliance team was operating in Cape Coast, similar enforcement activities were being carried out in other regions as part of the nationwide effort to regulate the traditional medicine sector.