allAfrica.com: Cameroon: Why I Practise Both Modern And Traditional Medicine

Professor Daniel Noni Lantum is, to say the least, in a class of his own. A Western-trained medical practitioner and Professor in Public Health, he is also a prolific writer with several tiles on Nso folklore to his credit. But wait for this: The Professor is into traditional medical practice and easily combines this with conventional medicine.Professor Lantum was in Buea last week and talked exclusively to The Post. It is a must read.

The Post: My main curiosity is the two personalities that you incorporate; namely the conventional medical doctor and the traditional practitioner. How do these two marry? And how did you acquire both?

Prof. Lantum: I am a civilised African. I mean that I also learned and acquired what we call the folk wisdom of Cameroon, and part of folk wisdom is traditional medicine. I learned about medicinal plants. I was treating people, before I went to secondary school and after that, I decided to do medicine.

One of the reasons was that I had onchocerchiasis and there was no traditional medicine that could treat it; so I had to go and learn modern medicine to treat myself and other people. When I became a medical doctor and eventually a professor, I said wouldn't abandon folk medicine and that is why I combine the two.

Being a modern doctor and scientist didn't help me to be able to do a lot of research on folk remedy, and to prove that they were effective. It also meant that I had to drop the bias that was imposed by colonialism. Anything about Africa was not good. I didn't believe in that, so I said, I will go and see, and I gave a scientific dimension to what was called empirical knowledge.

Which of them takes the biscuit, traditional or conventional? In other words, in which of these fields are you more competent, more functional?

Prof. Lantum: Doctor of medicine, and as a professor, teaching the thing to modern physicians, that becomes far more open. I earn my living from that one, but all the same, I am fully aware that traditional medicine is important. I have worked with the Ministry of Health and particularly with the World Health Organisation, WHO, and the Ministry of Health is going to adopt traditional medicine and seek ways of integrating it into other health care services. Whether the ministry does that officially or not, in practice it happens. There is no question about that.

When do you find it convenient to practise traditional instead of conventional medicine?

Prof. Lantum:If somebody from the village comes up to me and talks of a problem which involves rural concepts and so on, I understand him in the traditional context and I develop the issue with him, from that point of view. Then see what we could do within the local context. I write a prescription for him. I am also able to explain to him that this is a natural disease, and that it can be treated with modern medicine without any kind of confusion about customs.

Have you ever had occasion to consult and start treating a patient in a modern hospital only to decide along the line to switch to the traditional way?

Prof. Lantum:Oh yes! For instance, I discovered the treatment for cataract when I was Chief Medical Officer of Tiko Hospital. I had no ophthalmologist; so when patients came, I treated them with traditional medicine and opened their eyes. I treated my father with that traditional medicine which I learned from a Bororo man who was treating the cataract in the bushes of Ndumbo. It worked. Also, there are times when people come to you and their folk remedy is handy and then you prescribe that to them.

Do you by any means belong to the league of traditional doctors who advertise the "200 disease cure"? How comfortable are you with this claim?

Prof.Lantum:When you start talking of one drug, which treats 200 diseases, you are talking bull-shit; you are talking nonsense absolutely. What is a disease? When a man says that he has had a heart disease, what he means is gastritis. When you ask him 'what is a disease to you?' He tells you symptoms and cough, diseases and things like that. All that is bull-shit. They simply want to bamboozle people and look great. That doesn't mean that he actually knows diseases and their specific causes and how to treat them.

You did formal education, getting taught what it takes to arrive at scientific proof. Your not-very-learned "colleagues" without the benefit of formal scientific education may not be in position to give apt scientific diagnosis and prescriptions to particular situations. How safe or unsafe is this?

Prof. Lantum:I wouldn't say it is dangerous because there is what we call empirical knowledge which is perfectly sound.

But empirical knowledge may also amount to several trial and error sessions. Sounds like indiscriminately transforming one's patients into some kind of gullible guinea pigs, don't you think?

Prof.Lantum:No, no, no! You can have revealed knowledge. One man has just died in Kom at 104 years. He was called Ka-leitii. (Don't hide it). How did he get that name Ka-leitii? He was inspired and he was traditionally given to the treatment of mental diseases. He went to Mesaje and found another traditional doctor who was inspired.

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