Efforts by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development to fast-track the Federal Government’s Transformation Agenda on women empowerment for the development of the nation, has received a boost.
This is as plans are underway to maximise the potentials of a medicinal plant, Moringa, to create jobs and step down maternal and child mortality in the country.
The Ministry is to partner a government agency, National Medicinal Plants Development Company (NMPDC) in mobilising and sensitising over 72 per cent of women in the country, predominantly the rural farmers to cultivate and process the plant and other 8,000 species of medicinal plants to provide health, nutrition and economic empowerment for them.
The recent development was contained in a press release, signed by press secretary of the ministry, Mr. Saghir Mohammed, and made available to THISDAY in Abuja.
According to the release, the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Zainab Maina, said Nigeria was a country blessed with abundant human and natural resources which are yet to be fully tapped.
She also commended the Federal Government for creating the National Medicinal Plants Development Company, which she noted, would ensure that the benefits of herbs in the country were fully exploited.
Addressing staff of NMPDC who paid a courtesy visit to her office, Maina, pledged her Ministry’s support to the organisation for their mutual benefit, and for health and economic empowerment of women, adding that her ministry was a major stakeholder in the industry, in view of its mandate which cuts across women, children, the elderly and persons with disabilities
The Managing Director of NMPDC, Hajiya Zainab Shariff, said the organisation plans to harness the potentials of local medicinal plants for health, nutritional and socio-economic benefit of Nigerians and the people of other countries. It also seeks to improve the health indices of the country through the integration of herbal medicine into the maternal healthcare delivery system.
The NMPDC boss informed the minister that, the global market for medicinal and herbal plant in 2007 was 87 billion dollars, and that India has over 8,000 manufacturing outfits for medicinal and herbal plants.
Shariff lamented that Nigeria was not actively involved in commercialisation of medicinal plants, with less than 5 per cent being tapped.
She stated that, “in line with the Transformational Agenda of the Federal Government, cultivation in small, medium and commercial scale will lead to wealth creation and employment generation”.
She stressed that harnessing the nutritional value of identified medicinal plants would reduce maternal and child mortality, Malaria and HIV burden, and was also a true way of facilitating the attainment of MDG goals and Vision 2020.
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/fg-partners-agency-on-job-creation-health-care/100999/
