New Telegraph

FEC okays Alternative Medicine Practice Council

…ratifies Nigeria’s membership of Int’l Coffee Organisation

 

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved a memo on a bill to establish a Council for Traditional, Alternative and Complementary Medicine Practice in the country.

 

The Council, chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday also ratified Nigeria’s membership of the International Coffee Organisation. Also, the FEC considered a proposal on National Policy on Waste Management in Nigeria.

 

Briefing newsmen after the Council meeting held in the Presidential Villa yesterday, Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Niyi Adebayo, said with the ratification of the nation’s membership of the International Coffee Organisation, Nigeria has now transited from an observing nation to a participatory membership with all benefits accruable therefrom.

 

 

He said: “Some of the benefits that will come to the country will include allocation of coffee development projects and access to consultative fora on coffee sector finance.

 

“We’ll have access to fora where producing and consuming countries can discuss key issues and difficulties relating to international coffee trade and develop timely policies and solutions, which means that we’ll be actively involved in creating policies that will improve the trade of coffee.”

 

Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, who also briefed newsmen, said the establishment of the Council for Traditional, Alternative and Complementary Medicine Practice will take it out of obscurity and give it a profile for institutionalization as done in other countries, particularly China and India.

 

According to him, “The outbreak of COVID-19 has renewed the call for homegrown solutions to all these public health diseases and to find the value in our traditional medicines and this is an opportunity with which traditional medicine’s practice can, not only upscaled, but also be regulated because there are also areas of malpractice that should be checked.”

 

 

The proposed Council, the minister said, will provide trainings, set up institutions being able to research further, working with the Institute of Pharmaceutical Research of Nigeria to dig out the values that are in the nation’s traditional medicines. Issues around protection of intellectual property rights will also be addressed by the Council when established, he assured.

 

Minister of Environment, Mahmood Abubakar, told newsmen that the proposed policy on waste management will ensure that used plastics are recycled in order to protect the environment and inhibit the adverse effects of climate change.

 

“What this policy seeks to do is to seize the opportunity of our paradigm shift from linear economy to circular economy. The standard procedure in the past is: you produce, you use, and you dispose. We just realise that we cannot continue to do that.

 

And plastic has lent itself to recycling, reuse, and reduction as waste,” he explained. He added that though his ministry has constructed a number of Plastic Recycling Plants around the country, the private sector is being encouraged to invest more in the sector.

 

Abubakar added that with the policy in place, more jobs would be created for the teeming unemployed youths in the country.

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