Absence of even a basic drug such as paracetamol - and the critical painkiller morphine - has caused more Zimbabweans to turn to traditional healers

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ZIMBABWE'S government recently announced that the country had run out of the critical painkiller morphine.

It was just the latest development in a debilitating healthcare crisis that has seen hospitals turn away patients because of drug shortages.

An underfunded health sector has been in rapid decline in Zimbabwe, where shortages of medicines are the rule and health professionals have left the country in droves over the past decade to seek better salaries abroad.

In the absence of even a basic drug such as paracetamol, desperate patients such as 44-year-old asthma patient Susan Pamire have turned to traditional herbs.

While traditional healers have long retained a rural client base, urban residents are now also turning to them.

"Traditional herbs have become the sole alternative for me, even though I still prefer medicine from the clinic," says Pamire, who has also battled hypertension for years.

"Better these visits to the inyanga (the local name for a traditional healer) than wait for tablets from the clinic, which I know are not available, or else I would die waiting," the mother of five said.

People like Janet Dliwayo, who has long experience harvesting herbs in rural Matebeleland, are able to operate in a thriving herbal market in Bulawayo's Makokoba township.

"The medicines I sell here come from my rural area, where not everyone knows which tree or herb treats what," says Dliwayo.

Sibangilizwe Dube, a member of the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association (Zinatha), says the government's admission that it is failing to provide medicine points to a need to take traditional healers more seriously.

"There is still cynicism among some doctors who think we cannot fill the gap by providing life-saving herbs and medicines.

"Yet we know there are researchers who come into the country and steal our knowledge to make drugs overseas. I do not understand it," says Dube.

International researchers have over the past decade looked to the use made of the rich biodiversity by traditional healers in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Southern Africa, for promising leads to develop treatments for some of the world's deadliest diseases.

The World Health Organisation, which has taken an active role in facilitating communication between medical scientists, public health authorities and traditional healers, estimates that up to 80percent of Zimbabweans rely on herbal remedies for their healthcare.

These numbers are true for many countries across Africa, says Banele Gama, a Zimbabwean medical practitioner working in South Africa.

"What people generally want is better access to medicine and healthcare.

"If they can get this outside of hospitals and at a low cost, I believe governments should encourage the traditional practitioners, whose indigenous knowledge of herbs cannot be dismissed," Gama said.

The near-absence of standardisation and proper regulation means the use of traditional medicines poses some risks. Professional health groups in Zimbabwe have decried the illegal importation of alternative medicines from as far as China.

This month, the Traditional Medical Council of Zimbabwe (TMCZ), which is registered under the ministry of health, announced that it was pushing for the toughening of laws that govern the importation of traditional medicines, as it had noted an alarming increase in the smuggling of medicinal herbs into the country.

The TMCZ says healers in the country also need regulation.