Story by Cordelia Ngara
THE International Medical Missionary Africa Society (IMMAS) has partnered the Traditional Medical Practitioners Council (TMPC), amid plans to produce traditional medicines for use by public health institutions.
The partnership between the International Medical Missionary Africa Society (IMMAS) and the Traditional Medical Practitioners Council (TMPC) was endorsed by the Ministry of Health and Child Care in Harare this Thursday.
“This is an interesting development whereby the traditional practitioner Council made an initiatives with a group of church of organisations where they pledged that they will now be working together,” noted Deputy Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr John Mangwiro.
“If they really have to save lives, we need to do it properly and correctly. This is quite surprising that today pastors, bishops, traditional healers were talking the same thing and that is the well-being of Zimbabwe. And so we said it should be done in a correct way and I agreed with them that there should be a proper place where these activities should be done so that people work together,” Dr Mangwiro went on.
IMMAS and TMPC representatives explained the scope of the partnership.
“We are specialists in traditional medicines and we offer other programmes as well. So today, the purpose of this event is to open officially IMMAS in Zimbabwe and in other countries as well as to pronounce the activity that we have that complements the national health strategy,” said International Medical Missionary Africa Society Director, Mr Zakeyo Chirume.
“We are there to regulate and supervise. All traditional medical practitioners in Zimbabwe and we are here to support IMMAS under the purview of the Ministry of Health and Child Care,” Traditional medical practitioners Council Acting Registrar, Mr Givemore Kanda.
“We are there to supervise their action programmes so we are here to see whether they are doing things in the conformity of the act. This will actually help to reduce the amount of forex we use to import drugs. During COVID-19-time Zumbani helped us a lot and we realised we can actually produce our own medicines,” he added.
TMPC and IMMAS are under the Ministry of Health and Child Care, which is seeking to harmonise production of safe and effective medicines to ensure universal health coverage.
