Ghana introduces a new digital licensing system for traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine practitioners, modernizing the healthcare sector.
In a significant move to modernize Ghana’s healthcare sector, the Chief Executive Officer and Registrar of the Traditional Medicine Practice Council (TMPC), Dr. Michael Kyeremanteng, has announced the introduction of a digital licensing system for traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine (TCIM) practitioners.
This development marks a crucial step towards the regulation and formal recognition of traditional and alternative medical practices in the country.
The Traditional Medicine Practice Council (TMPC) is working on an initiative to transition the licensing of TCIM practitioners from a manual process to a fully digital system.
This new system is expected to streamline the licensing process, ensuring that practitioners are registered, monitored, and regulated more efficiently.
Speaking at a general meeting with staff of the Traditional Medicine Practice Council and some stakeholders like the Ghana Alternative Medicine Practitioners Association and the Ghana Association of Medical Herbalists in Accra, Dr. Kyeremateng stated that the situation where practitioners are issued with paper licenses would be rather given personal identification numbers (PINs), which would be unique to each practitioner and their statuses easily assessed by registration assistants right in the field.
Over the years, the council seems not to have the appropriate structures in place, leading to identity crises and thereby demotivating them to attend to their various tasks with the urgency and efficiency expected of them.
He promised to change all these but reminded the staff that “he sees the Council as an excavator that does not speed, but with each staff member diligently going about their various tasks as mandated by the TMP Act 2000 (Act 575), this excavator will speed to its destination quickly to achieve its aim.”
”To ensure the efficiency of registration assistants who are mostly working in the field, they will be equipped with tablets to enable them to check practitioners’ eligibility to operate on their routine inspections.”
This, according to Dr. Michael Kyeremateng, would curb the situation where staff would call the head office to ascertain a practitioner’s status, which in some cases creates delays in assessing information to enhance their efforts at ensuring that all practitioners are licensed and their premises are certified.
Dr. Michael Kyeremateng mentioned that he has received from an international collaborative agency, the Edenic Management Consulting Group, based in the United States of America, USA, who are ready to collaborate with the Council by way of training programs for staff and practitioners to improve upon their skill sets to be proficiently equipped to provide standard primary health care delivery to contribute to the country’s achieving SDG Goal 2, which urges all member states of the United Nations to ensure “good health and well-being” is available and accessible to all their citizens by the year 2030.
Traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine play a significant role in Ghana’s healthcare landscape. More than 70% of the Ghanaian population relies on these forms of medicine for their primary healthcare needs.
The new digital system will allow practitioners to apply for and renew their licenses online, significantly reducing the time and resources previously required for manual processing.
The system will also facilitate better data management, enabling the TMPC to maintain an up-to-date registry of practitioners and monitor compliance with regulatory standards.
The digital licensing system is anticipated to have far-reaching implications for the healthcare sector in Ghana. By ensuring that only qualified practitioners are licensed, the system will enhance the credibility of TCIM practices and increase public trust.
