Wrong TAMA implementation

YOU don’t know what TAMA stands for, you are not alone. Like most Filipinos, you don’t know that it stands for the Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act, signed by then President Fidel Ramos in 1998. Originally proposed by then administrative framework for the senator Juan Flavier as Senate Bill protection of the herbal medicine 1471, it created the Traditional industry from both local and foreign Medicine Authority ( TMA) which threats. would be responsible for the And so on their own, a few local systematic and scientific development drug companies have taken advantage of alternative and traditional of the law by synthesizing indigenous medicine in the Philippines. It medicinal plants i nto tablets, was intended to complement, not capsules and syrup. Among them displace, conventional medicine are lagundi, for cough and asthma; practice. gubat, an antispasmodic; President Ramos predicted akapulco, atifungal; and sambong, a

tsaang that it would end the passivity of diuretic; buena, antipyretic; government in promoting cheap and ampalaya, anti-diabetic.

yerba herbal alternatives. How wrong he The four others that the Food was! and Drug Administration ( FDA)

A f t e r more 1 9 y e a r s , has validated as medicinal plants unfortunately, the law has hardly are ( local garlic), anti- taken off – no thanks to the hostility choleterolomic; ( local

bawang of the Philippine Medical Association guava); niyogan, anti-

bayabas ( PMA), which had attempted to helmintic; and bato, anti-

niyug- block its passage on the pretext that hyperuricemic agent.

ulasimang it would stall, rather than advance, Had TAMA been fully implemented medical science. by TMA in collaboration with the

The TMA, on the other hand, has FDA, an estimated 70 other folkloric surprisingly made itself inactive plants would have already been – probably due to PMA pressure. approved for therapeutic uses. The Deafening is its silence vis-à-vis the vegetable malunggay, for instance, foul tactics of multinational drug when encapsulated, still bears companies to discredit effective the FDA- required warning “no herbs.” approved therapeutic claim.” And

The TMA has reneged on yet it sells like hotcakes simply i t s mandate t o provide t he because users find it effective against

hypertension, arthritis, scabies and constipation, among others. No wonder manufacturers of “junk noodles” have decided to enrich them with malunggay.

By t rial and error, hard- up individuals have proven for themselves the reasonableness of going back to natural medicines like the ones already cited. You must have read of the case of a cervical cancer patient who survived by drinking boiled baybayon. No doubt the failure of the law to

rosas sa right the wrong image of traditional medicine as quackery stems from the bias of Filipino physicians for conventional Western pharmacology as taught i n medical schools. Multinational drug companies, fearful of diminishing patronage, sponsor yearly foreign junkets for popular specialists who prescribe their branded drugs. Moreover, proud physicians cling to the belief that primitive medicine is obsolete in modern times. They would not have spent a decade in college if they would only end up as “glamorized herbolarios.”

It cannot be denied, however, that bigger countries have extensively explored indigenous and alternative healing traditions. China has already successfully embedded hitherto questionable traditions like acupuncture and acupressure with conventional medicine.

Germany, a world l eader in conventional medicine, is also known as the birthplace of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, who introduced homeopathy.

The Office of Alternative Medicine in Washington DC has officially validated homeopathy as a form of healing.

The so-called nutritional medicine – made up of fruits, herbs and vegetables -- was the stuff that the Greek father of medicine, Hippocrates ( 460- 357 BC), prescribed to his patients.

It’s a shame: Today’s doctors who swore by the Hippocratic Oath have gone astray. com/ PN)

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