The Ugandan government plans to include traditional and herbal healers in the general health sector by developing a national legal and regulatory framework within existing legislation, officials have said.
"We are trying to introduce referral systems in the traditional healing system and work on intellectual property rights of traditional healers on herbs they develop," the head of the government's natural chemotherapeutics research laboratory, Grace Nambatya, said.
Nambatya said almost two-thirds of the country's 24 million people use traditional practitioners, including herbalists, spiritual healers, bone setters, hydrotherapists and midwives.
But some of the healers are accused of harmful practices the government thinks can only be controlled if the practitioners are themselves regulated.
A government-established organisation Traditional and Modern Health Practitioners Together against Aids and Other Diseases (THETA) is involved in a clinical study involving traditional healers to evaluate the effectiveness of local herbal treatment for selected HIV/AIDS-related diseases.
Studies by THETA have so far showed significant clinical improvement in some HIV/AIDS-related ailments, like shingles and chronic diarrhoea, where patients on herbal treatment were far better off than those on available modern medicines, Uganda AIDS Commission spokesman James Kigozi said.
The chemotherapeutics research laboratory provides a clinical evaluation of herbs and other natural medicinal content.
Nambatya, a holder of doctorate in medical research, said that Makerere University medical school was already developing a curriculum to introduce medical students to herbal medicine in their first year of study.
"Herbal research, where traditional healers play a lead role, has already registered a degree of success, especially in the treatment of the country's main killer, malaria," she said.
"Two formulas have been registered with the health ministry after their clinical results were tremendously good and 10 more will be registered this year," she added.
Nambatya has also started her own clinic at her parents' home in Masaka, some 120 kilometres (75 miles) south-west of Kampala Pesso Health Care Centre bridges modern medicine and herbal treatment.
The government has registered an estimated 20,000 traditional healers in order to monitor their activities and co-ordinate their work, but other estimates suggest that some 150,000 healers are active, mainly in rural areas.
Uganda's Health Minister Jim Muhwezi last week said the government recognised the work of traditional healers as partners in healthcare delivery.
South Africa is one of the first African countries to have announced, last week, that it will process some 13,000 applications to have traditional medicines - some claimed to be AIDS cures - listed as safe and effective.
The 13,000 applications received so far by the Medicines Control Council, a watchdog regulating the use of medicine, are from countries around the globe, including China and India, as well as home-grown remedies in South Africa, according to the registrar of medicines Precious Matsoso.