Johannesburg — HEALTH Minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang and her director-general yesterday stridently defended the role of traditional medicines.

Traditional African remedies were being criticised by conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry in a way other remedies were not, she said.

"What really bothers me is that when we talk about Chinese traditional medicines and Indian traditional medicines, these questions don't arise," Tshabalala-Msimang told foreign correspondents in Johannesburg.

Traditional medicines are widely used in SA, but there is limited documented evidence of their risks and benefits. Much of the knowledge about such remedies is based on oral traditions.

The health minister, speaking ahead of releasing the results of last year's national HIV and syphilis prevalence survey, said Africans had been using traditional remedies for hundreds of years.

"It's you who feel better. It's not for me to say 'Stop it because you haven't done the research'."

Tshabalala-Msimang said the government would "pretty soon" be establishing a council to oversee the country's traditional health practitioners.

Director-general of health Thami Mseleku described as "colonialist" the mentality of conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry.

"They see it threatening certain things. They want to condemn it."

Traditional medicine was "happy" to subject itself to rigorous testing, provided the intellectual property rights of traditional healers were protected, Mseleku said. However, there was no money to establish such processes because the conventional pharmaceutical industry wanted to protect its own turf, he said.

Mseleku said he was using a traditional medicine to treat his own condition of diabetes, but would not reveal what it was while intellectual property rights were not protected .

He also said government officials were not promoting the use of HIV/Aids remedies such as uBhejane, a herbal product made by traditional healer and former truck driver Zeblon Gwala.

" Show us anywhere where you've had any official of the ministry of health saying use uBhejane ," Mseleku said.

Herbert Vilakazi, special adviser to KwaZulu-Natal premier S'bu Ndebele, has been helping Gwala to promote uBhejane.

With reporting by Tamar Kahn