Advertising moves people towards goods. The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. Advertisements are intended to enhance the sales of a company by convincing customers that the company’s services or products are the best. What is the place of advertisement in medicine?

World Health Organization (WHO) ethical criteria for medicinal drug promotion(1988), constitute a frame of reference for judging proper behaviour in drug promotion. Advertisements should not take undue advantage of people's concern for their health. They should not generally be permitted for prescription drugs or to promote drugs for certain serious- conditions that can be treated only by qualified health practitioners

The Code of Ethics for the Ghana Health Service (GHS) defines the general moral principles and rules of behavior for all service personnel in the Ghana Health Service. It emphatically states that all Service personnel shall avoid the use of their professional qualifications in the promotion of commercial products.

This has been put in place to discourage exaggerations or claims that cannot be substantiated, to minimizes commercialization of the practice and also helps to avoid the perpetuation of unrealistic expectations among patients. Medical practitioners are not to advertise as the patient is vulnerable to misleading information. It is unethical for practitioners to associate themselves with an institution that advertises for patients.

And the argument has been made that advertisements provide patients with valuable information about drugs and diseases. But are drug advertisements really educational? They may provide some form of valuable information, but their primary purpose is to increase the sales of new products or maintain sales of established products. The indefinite adjectives upon which commercial advertising thrives, words like “best,” “leading,” “most,” and “outstanding” are ethically too risky to be permissible in the practice of medicine.

Traditional medicine refers to the beliefs, ideas, and practices of a person recognized by the community in which the practitioner lives as competent and qualified to provide health care using naturally occurring substances. This can also include other methods based on the social, cultural and religious background as well as on the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs that are prevalent in the community regarding physical, mental and social well-being and the causation of disease and disability.

The Ghanaian parliament established the traditional medical practice act-2000 (Act 575) which set up the Traditional Medical Council (TMC). The TMC is tasked with setting standards for the practice of traditional medicine; issuing certificates of registration to qualified practitioners and licensing premises for the practice; determining and enforcing a code of ethics for traditional medicine practice in conjunction with an association of Traditional Medicine Practitioners (TMP) recognized by the Minister of Health.  The ministry of health established the Ghana Federation of Traditional Medicine Practitioners Association (GHAFTRAM) as the umbrella organization for all the various associations.

The code of ethics of the Traditional Medicine Practitioners article 23 states that practices and practitioner’s self or name should not be advertised, making it emphatically clear the stance of the afore mentioned association on the matter.

These rules have been put in place to protect the public from being browbeaten or brainwashed into buying drugs they might not need.

These very rules stipulated in the WHO ethical guidelines, the Ghanaian constitution and ethical guidelines of both the traditional medical practitioners and the Ghana Health service are being violated on a daily basis. We can barely go a day without being bombarded on air by various herbalists claiming to have the panacea for all diseases. Who regulates these people? Who verifies their ‘so called” qualifications before they speak in public? In medicine, it is said that “no knowledge is better than false knowledge”. The majority “medically ignorant” population is easily led astray by these “sweet-talkers”.

It is incumbent that we know that Patient-to-patient referrals are the best form of advertising and Quackery has no friend like gullibility, for some remedies are worse than the disease.

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The Authors are students of the School of Medical Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (SMS-KNUST)

REFERENCES

Code of ethics of the Traditional Medicine Practitioners, page 4

http://www.ghanahealthservice.org/ghs-subcategory.php?cid=2&scid=45

http://laws.ghanalegal.com/acts/id/220/section/2/Object_And_Functions_Of_The_Council

Adriane Fugh-Berman et al https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1450016/

http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/documents/whozip08e/whozip08e.pdf