African
Living Spa
Like its better-known counterparts such as Ayurvedic and Chinese Medicine, African indigenous healthcare has a solid scientific basis, but little tradition of collaboration with allopathic medicine. Osero Forest Clinic has set out to initiate such a collaborative approach to community wellness.
The purpose of the project:
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✦To provide travelers with alternative solutions to their health issues, as a part of a package that also includes a medicinal talk, medicinal walk, and Spa healing experience.
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✦To create a bridge between Maasai traditional medicine and allopathic medicine - the two working in tandem to provide alternatives to the traveler.
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✦To provide benefits to indigenous African communities, e.g. through creation of model traditional clinics with access to collaborative scientific allopathic knowledge. Sister clinics have been established in the northern Tanzania region.
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✦To build confidence in the scientific collaboration of traditional and western medicine thereby preserving the indigenous knowledge by mainstreaming it.
To kick off the project, the team has identified eight plants that are used most often in Maasai traditional healing. They have done extensive research on these plants, and have found the results to be ground-breaking. Five out of the eight have been documented in a report describing their active ingredients and uses. The other three and many of the remaining materials in the Osero dispensary require additional research with some needing a full photochemical analysis. This examples the long term scientific and ethno botanical research sponsored by the Osero Forest Clinic.
Additionally, clinical observation will be done in Osero Forest Clinic to document the use of traditional medicines in a systematic way, to build confidence in the clinic’s collaborative approach to medicine.
Planting and harvesting our own organic, traditional medicine on the farm ensures that we have a sustainable supply of traditional medicine in case a plant may be rapidly disappearing in its natural environment. Providing comprehensive information on traditional plants & medicine for our healers documented scientific research is expanded annually. Researching toxicity effects, storage and shelf-life of traditional medicines is also ongoing.
The healers of the only integrated Medical Medicine Clinic of East Africa:
Osero Forest Clinic, African Living Spa.
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Osero Forest Clinic refers to FAME, the most modern health facility in northern Tanzania. Its mission is explained in the Video above.