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By Toussaint Honvou, National Coordinator, Réseau YES-Benin

The Réseau YES-Benin is a network of seventeen non-governmental organizations (NGOs), all of which work directly with poor communities in Benin. These members propose activities to YES-Benin, which selects its activities program from among the ideas. Additionally, the members identify and implement their own programs. One of the member NGOs is the Beninese Association for the Promotion of Orphans and Abandoned Children (ABEEA), whose activities emphasize health through traditional medicine.

Before the colonial era, Western hospitals were non-existent in Africa. However, traditional doctors, nurses, and midwives provided widely accessible and effective services to local populations. Their services were devalued with the arrival of Europeans and other foreigners on the continent. Thus, traditional African practices in general, and medicine in particular, were negated by Africans themselves in favor of their Western equivalents. Faced with this new disregard for their professions, the individuals who practiced traditional medicine took care to pass their skills on to the leaders charged with guarding local tradition, thus ensuring the protection of their work. Among these practices were the use of medicinal plants and other natural pharmaceuticals, which were considered useless or even satanic by their detractors. For this reason, certain sacred texts warn: “My people are dying for lack of knowledge”.

Traditional, authentically African values have always been passed down to those deemed worthy, who will use them to alleviate human suffering. It is with this vision that ABEEA, with the support of the Réseau YES-Benin, has established a team to promote traditional medicine.

This article seeks to raise international consciousness of African medicine, which will lead to more research on the issue and demonstrate the link between this organization’s work and the objectives of the Réseau YES-Benin, namely contributing to the resolution of the problems of health, youth employment, and development on the African continent. In effect, ABEEA recently proved the effectiveness of traditional medicine through its provision of medicines to relieve the effects of diabetes, uterine fibroids, hernia, and malaria.

For a low cost, sick people can obtain a cure for their illnesses, without risk of intoxication or of harmful side effects. This treatment is based on the provision of natural plants. Uterine Fibroids is cured without invasive surgery, thanks to generations of experience in traditional medical professions. Certain traditional cures are definitive: these methods have proven effective in Benin and elsewhere in West Africa, and they could even be exported to other continents thanks to the partnership between the Réseau YES-Benin and the IIJD. Pharmacies that conform to regulations in each country could be opened, thus creating new jobs for young people.

Research is being conducted on the treatment of other common illnesses, and this will be the object of other publications. Thus, Africa is participating in globalization as a full partner, by passing on its knowledge of effective local practices. In our next publication, we will elaborate on the ways in which the Réseau YES-Benin seeks to perfect the sector of traditional medicine while responding to the accepted practices of modern pharmacy.