Ghana has more than 100,000 traditional medicine practitioners, but fewer than 15 per cent of them are actually registered with the body meant to regulate them.
That gap, according to the Traditional Medicine Practice Council’s Registrar, Dr Yakubu Tobor Yusuf, is making proper oversight of the sector difficult.
“We found out that the numbers are mind-boggling. Over 100,000,” he said at a media launch in Accra last Thursday, marking the 2026 African Traditional Medicine Day.
The council has spent the past six months pushing to close that gap, engaging practitioner associations at the district level and opening new regional and district offices to bring registration closer to practitioners. It has also inspected over 500 practice premises nationwide, shutting down some that posed risks to public health.
Check for the licence, Dr Yusuf tells the public
Dr Yusuf’s message to Ghanaians was direct: don’t accept treatment from anyone who can’t show you a licence. Every licensed premises is required to display one, complete with a QR code the public can scan to confirm it’s genuine. “Before you are treated, ask to see the licence. It must be displayed on the wall,” he said.
He also flagged a growing problem on social media, where the council has tracked more than 500 practitioners marketing unregistered medicines. “Tell the public to stay away from some of these people unless they are licensed practitioners and have been licensed to do so,” he warned.
Not everything a practitioner makes needs to go through the Food and Drugs Authority, Dr Yusuf explained. Fresh, unlabelled preparations made for a specific patient are fine under a practitioner’s own licence. But once a product is packaged, labelled or branded for wider sale, it has to be certified and registered with the FDA.
Jail time for unlicensed practice
Practising without a licence carries real consequences: a fine of up to 500 penalty units, or GH¢6,000, up to two years in prison, or both. Dr Yusuf said the law isn’t just on paper, pointing to a case in the Volta Region where a practitioner had already been arrested and was expected to appear in court.
Licences also aren’t a one-time thing. Practitioners have to renew annually, which means keeping up with continuing professional development, paying the required fees, and letting their premises be re-inspected.
Raising the bar on training
Beyond enforcement, the council is trying to professionalise how practitioners are trained. Its Governing Board is currently reviewing a six-month, competency-based curriculum for herbalists, bone setters, birth attendants and spiritual healers, one that would be taught in local languages and account for how much experience a practitioner already has.
Dr Yusuf also pushed for more research funding, arguing that traditional knowledge needs to be scientifically tested for safety and effectiveness rather than taken on faith. He pointed to work already underway at KNUST and Central University, where researchers, backed by the German development agency GIZ and PharmaVax, are studying standardised herbal treatments for hypertension and pain relief.
The stakes, he said, are high: roughly 70 per cent of Ghanaians rely on herbal and traditional medicine as part of their primary healthcare, which is exactly why getting the regulation right matters.
