BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Terrance Drew says while regional healthcare providers tend to be more oriented toward modern medicine they should also be sensitized to the role of traditional medicine.
Prime Minister Dr. Terrance Drew addressing the ECCB seventh Growth and Resilience Dialogue which ends on Wednesday.Dr. Drew, a medical practitioner, told the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) seventh Growth and Resilience Dialogue that a sizable proportion of patients use traditional medicines and some form of traditional knowledge in health as a form of self–care or more specifically as a personal primary healthcare strategy.
“ We know this, we drink horse rub dung, and the cattle tongue bush, and this came from hundreds of years of observation, and this should not be taken lightly,” he said, noting that he is happy the two-day event, which ends later on Wednesday, would also be discussing the value of traditional, folk, or complementary medicine in today’s world.
“Our healthcare providers tend to be more oriented toward modern medicine and should also be sensitized to the role of traditional medicine because the typical patient often has a different worldview from that of nurses and doctors. How many times are we told as doctors, “Well I stopped taking the blood pressure pill, I am taking the bush”? It is a common thing in St. Kitts and Nevis,” he said.
Dr. Drew said while he supports the call for more research in this area to inform how traditional medicine can effectively interface with modern medicine, during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic “we witnessed firsthand the benefits of the collaboration of both forms of medicinal practices, modern and traditional, to combat the symptoms” of the virus.
He said, for example, the blend of turmeric, ginger, and lemon juice was used for its anti-inflammatory effect and to help boost the immune system.
“We also used sunlight and a plethora of other types of herbs, which of course would have contained a lot of vitamins to help to combat the infection that many of us suffered from,” Dr. Drew said, noting that In the twin island Federation and the rest of the Eastern Caribbean, the COVID-19 pandemic had an “unprecedented impact on our health systems, our economies, and the lives and livelihoods of our people.
“COVID-19 influenced supply chain chokeholds and really affected us in multiple ways that we have not resolved as yet. It revealed gaps in the health systems which must be plugged to ensure resilience, preparedness, and readiness to respond to the next public health threat, which could be occurring now, next week, or next month.”
Dr. Drew said research has also underscored the therapeutic benefits of cannabinoids, the “fancy name for cannabis, marijuana, and ganja, as we call it in the subregion.
“We anticipate regional data on the uses of cannabis along with hearing about the best practices in establishing a medicinal cannabis industry. I can say that St. Vincent in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) has already shipped medicinal cannabis to Germany and that St. Vincent already has a lab that is already approved by the European Union (EU) system”.
He said once their cannabis is tested to be safe in St. Vincent it is allowed to be shipped into the EU and that St. Kitts-Nevis also intends to develop such an industry and hope to partner with other colleagues in this regard.
Dr. Drew said that as the region moves to strengthen its health systems in preparation for future public health threats, “we must embrace innovative technologies to ensure efficiency and efficacy in healthcare delivery”.
He said digitization is a priority for his government, noting that digital technology could help make unsustainable healthcare systems more efficient, improve the interaction between patients and medical staff, and offer more affordable, quicker, and more effective treatments for diseases.
He said a few examples of technologies that enhance medical facilities and healthcare delivery are artificial intelligence (AI), noting that AI is already being used in medical schools.
He said medical students and doctors use the technology to reach a diagnosis that is more dependable, adding “so, AI is fundamental in medical practice today. Machine learning is also important, as is virtual care or telemedicine.
”Why is this important? Because our region is small. I don’t think we have a million people in the OECS member countries. Yet, our demand for quality healthcare is extremely high and our expectations as members of these subregions; these expectations are also high.
“ And so, telemedicine or virtual care can offer access to high-quality healthcare without leaving the region. Just to put things in perspective, we are already going to partner with the University Medical Center Hamburg, in Germany, to assist us in virtual medicine or telemedicine, with respect to reading our MRIs, x-rays, ultrasounds, and delivering other types of knowledge transfer opportunities. This is very powerful.”
Dr. Drew said that AI technology can be used to diagnose illnesses and provide specialized remedies. Internationally, the pharmaceutical industry is using machine learning to find novel medication candidates, instead of the time-consuming and expensive traditional way of searching through chemical libraries.
“Virtual care became an important practice during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it allowed medical professionals to interact remotely with their patients,” he said, adding “this is very interesting, in terms of using the technology to develop vaccines.
Dr. Drew said that there’s a virus that normally affects children called the rotavirus and AI was actually used to develop a vaccine to deal with the rotavirus.
“And so, studies that used to take sometimes decades can be narrowed down by one-tenth of the time. And so, they used this system to really develop a vaccine for this type of virus and the vaccine proved to be effective. AI is impacting medicine significantly in positive ways and that is why it has to be a part of the tool, that we would use to deal with improving our healthcare delivery.
”These are critical future healthcare considerations for our region as we work towards fortifying our healthcare systems and transforming our nations into sustainable island states,” Dr Drew added.
