April 9, 2021

As a way of raising the level of awareness of its activities, the Lagos State Traditional Medicine Board (LSTMB) has extended the sensitisation of its activities to Ikorodu and environs, with a call on traditional practitioners in the area to register their operations with the Agency.

Addressing traditional medicine practitioners who converged at the Palace of the Ayangburen of Ikorodu, HRM Oba, Dr. Kabiru Shotobi on Wednesday for the sensitisation exercise, the Board Chairman of LSTMB, Prof. Adebukola Adefule-Ositelu, urged the participants to see the agency as a partner in progress.

She noted that the sensitisation campaign is meant to help promote collaboration and understanding amongst the practitioners as well as improve on the registration and renewal of their operational licenses.

He assured them of better treatment under the present dispensation in the State, revealing that the administration of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has indicated willingness to give the practitioners their rightful position in the scheme of things at the State level.

The Chairman disclosed that the advocacy/sensitisation will also avail the practitioners the necessary information needed to conduct clinical trials of their research works and those of other officials of the agency.

Adefule-Ositelu, a Professor of Ophthalmology, encouraged the participants to keep records and update the data of their patients, saying that the collated data will assist in the clinical proof of each research and medications applied on every ailment for proper documentation.

Observing the need for an infrastructural upgrade of facilities at the headquarters of the LSTMB, the Chairman noted that plans are on the way to also establish laboratories for traditional medicine practitioners within the headquarters, produce more drugs and operate dispensary stores among other initiatives.

On his part, Mr. Olorunkemi Kadiku, the Registrar of LSTMB, disclosed that the agency will continue to extend its advocacy programmes to every part of the State in order to ensure that all the traditional practitioners are adequately captured.

He informed that the task force constituted by the agency and saddled with the responsibilities of identifying recalcitrant practitioners and restoring sanity into traditional medicine practices in Lagos State would commence their operations by the end of April 2021.

Kadiku noted that the activities of the agency are backed by the Health Sector Reform Law of 2016, being the umbrella legal backing for traditional herbal medicine practice.

The Ayangbunren of Ikorodu, HRM. Oba (Dr.) Kabiru Shotobi expressed his support and interest in Traditional Medicine practice, describing it as the origin of all other medicines.

Oba Shotobi equally encouraged practitioners, who are yet to register with the Lagos State Traditional Medicine Board to do so, just as he promised to shoulder the payment of registration fees for 100 practitioners from the community as a way of demonstrating his support for the activities of the agency.

While acknowledging the several interventions from the State government towards promoting good health through investment in both the traditional and modern-day medicine, Oba Shotobi, however, appealed to the practitioners to organise themselves in a very formidable way and collaborate with the traditional medicine board in its quest to stamp out unqualified practitioners, who have been giving traditional medicine a bad image before the populace.