Parliament says Zimbabwe should allocate funds for research into traditional medicines in 2022 budget

4.5  Research and Development for Promoting Evidence Based Use of Traditional and Complementary Medicines in Zimbabwe

4.5.1 According to Professor Chagonda, the University of Zimbabwe (UZ)-Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences started researching into indigenous plants, for example zumbani or manhuwenhuwe (aromatic plants) around the late 80s in Zimbabwe with funding from IDRC (Canada). The plants had high quality of oil for essential medicines but had low volume. Research for essential medicines and publications for the research are available but there was no funding to make products out of the aromatic plants.

4.5.2   Professor Chagonda informed the Committee that the University does not have a dedicated laboratory to enable continuation of research into indigenous plants’ medicinal properties. This is despite the fact that it has done a lot of research work on traditional medicine such as zumbani whose information is already at the UZ Library.

4.5.4   Mr. Kandiero also added that the Traditional Medical Practitioners conducted research on Gundamiti, a natural antiretroviral herb in the fight against HIV during the term of  Dr. Timothy Stamps as the  Minister of Health and Child Welfare. Sadly, Dr. Stamps passed on and efforts to continue with further research were futile as there was no more funding for the work.

4.5.5   Dr. Ndoro informed the Committee that the MoHCC had developed guidelines for clinical study of the traditional medicines and created a register to record COVID-19 medical claims made by the Traditional Medical Practitioners. He also informed the Committee that at the height of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, stakeholders submitted proposals for funding of research on COVID-19 medicines to the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development, but they were not funded.

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