ABSTRACT
Drawing on a series of country studies in Africa, the World Health Organization Global Atlas on Traditional Complementary and Alternative Medicine reports that 80% or more of the population of most African countries rely on traditional medicinal practices for primary health care. Traditionally the Khoi and San people use buchu for renal and digestive conditions. Any commercial development of traditional medicine needs to raise questions of who owns the knowledge and who will benefit from the product and its proceeds. The consumer market is estimated at over 500 million customers who make use of traditional medicinal plants. The Department for Traditional Medicine, within the National Institute for Research on Public Health, was founded in 1968, originally as the National Institute of Phytotherapy and Traditional Medicine. As far back as the 1960s a government team, led by Mr. Nasani Mubiru, began documenting the traditional medicine knowledge of many of Uganda's 111 districts.
