SHEKINA HERBAL CENTRE OFFERS RELIEF TO COUPLES (Page 11)

Story: Rose Hayford Darko, Tema

The inability of some married women to have children, a year or two after marriage, causes them a lot of anxiety and frustrations.
Due to the importance attached to childbirth in the Ghanaian society and Africa in general, most of such women face pressures from their in-laws, other family members and society at large.
Consequently, some of them resort to treatment from both orthodox sources and herbal practitioners to seek solution to their problems and save their marriages from collapse.
For the past 14 years, a 42-year-old herbal practitioner at Ashaiman, near Tema, has been of immense help to a number of such women.
Mr Ebenezer Adza-Kofi, the Director of the Shekina Herbal Centre, treats both men and women with infertility problems.
He said he took an interest in herbal medicine practice at a tender age of five when, playing as a child, he sat by his parents and bottled herbal preparations.
According to Mr Adza-Kofi, he was recruited into the Ghana Police Service in 1987, where he was nicknamed ‘recruit herbalist’ because he extended the treatment with herbs to his colleagues.
He said in 1994 he resigned from the Police Service to pursue his career in herbal treatment and went to the Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine at Mampong Akuapem in the Eastern Region for further training in diagnoses and medical terms related to various ailments and treatment.
Mr Adza-Kofi said after his training, he was attached to the Police Hospital in Accra for research into other scientific areas of study.
He later registered with the Ghana National Association of Traditional Healers and opened the Shekina Herbal Centre.
The centre has a laboratory manned by trained laboratory technicians who carry out laboratory tests on patients before they receive treatment. It also has a consulting room, records office, and an out-patients department.
Mr Adza-Kofi explained that after attending to patients who report to the centre, he requests various laboratory tests which help him in his diagnosis.
He said he had treated a number of infertility cases that had enabled female patients at the clinic to conceive and bear children.
When the Daily Graphic visited the centre, Mr Adza-Kofi was seen attending to a number of patients. Some of those interviewed said they were directed to the centre by friends who had been able to have children after receiving treatment from the centre.
Mr Adza-Kofi called for co-operation between herbal and orthodox medical practitioners to build a healthy partnership between the two service providers.
He said such harmony would help them compare notes and encourage herbal practitioners to refer cases beyond their capabilities to health centres without delay.
He said he had acquired a plot of land at Afienya to put up a school to train more people to help man the centre.
He said that had become necessary because, apart from infertility cases, a number of patients reported to the centre with other diseases, including sexually transmitted diseases, malaria and swellings on parts of their bodies.
He testified to the efficacy of traditional herbal medicine and called on the government to regulate the activities of herbal practitioners to weed out quacks in the field.