Traditional Healer School Ngelani
Education Planing 2008 - German Model
Aims to educate Traditional Healers in Kenya are to help more people to get better naturopathic and cheaper medical help and to educate
young persons for a new profession, to traditional healing methods and scientific research in this field.
Traditional Healer School Ngelani
The government of Kenya and the minister of health have announced their request for new laws and new standards in the teachings of traditional healing methods. The University of Nairobi and the National Museum in Nairobi started research in this field and published these results: (1) Conservation Status and Use of Medicinal Plants by Traditional Medical Practitioners in Machakos District, Kenya ( Winfried Musila, Daniel Kisangau and Joyce Muema).It is estimated that 1 Traditional Healer comes to 200 persons in Kenya (1 Medical Doctor to about 7.000). It can be estimated that 150.500 healers work in Kenya (31Mill.:200). These herb specialists are very important for the whole nation. The World Health Organisation estimates that 80% of the people worldwide only use traditional medicine. In Germany 30 – 80 % of the population sometimes use natural medicine methods. There are about 30.000 Traditional healers (Healing Practioners – Heilpraktiker) in Germany and about 40.000 medical doctors using medicinal plants and other traditional methods. Since 70 years there is a law on how these healing practitioners are examinated by the government to get the right for practical work. Mostly they visit one of the 120 schools for two years to learn theory about medicine (equivalent to a nurse's education) and the different traditional healing methods like medicinal plants, homeopathy, acupuncture, nosode-therapy etc. In Germany we have more than 40 different medical journals for medical doctors, traditional healers and also some for patients on the topic of more than 40 different methods of traditional healing that are used in Germany. There are many big organizations for traditional healers which organise congresses and education. The Rural Development Center in Ngelani (near Machakos) is working successfully for 30 years in educating young people for practical work and develops new ways to do this. I think a new group of 20- 30 students could become well trained tradition healers, similar to the German way. In the next months I will try to find help and money for this idea in Germany. Maybe the self-arranged production of medical herbs for export to Germany will help to finance this new idea.