 CSRPM was established by the Government of Ghana in 1975 as a result of the dream and vision of Dr. Oku Ampofo, a renowned allopathic Medical Practitioner, who having had personal experience of the therapeutic values of herbal medicines on himself and his father became an apostle of herbalism at a tender age.
The Centre originally started as a small OPD run by Dr. Oku Ampofo in the present Community Center (OBIKYERE) of Mampong-Akwapim before it moved to its present site. In the early sixties, the President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah sent Dr. Oku Ampofo and others to China to benefit from the Chinese experience in herbal medicine. It was there that the seminal ideas of the Centre were sown.
In 1971, Dr. Oku Ampofo and a team including representatives from the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Ghana Psychic and Traditional Healers Association sent a proposal to the Government of Ghana
recommending the establishment of a national Centre to facilitate and co-ordinate all research work on Ghanaian medicinal plants.
As a result, the Centre was established in 1975 by NRCD 344, as an Agency of the Ministry of Health, and was designated by WHO in December 1981 as a collaborating Centre for Traditional Medicine, the first in Sub Saharan Africa.
Until the late 1980's the Centre mainly provided clinical services to patients, collated ethnomedical information on medicinal plants and undertook the establishment of an arboretum for medicinal plants. Basic science research, however, commenced in 1986 with the establishment of the first research laboratory, which in 1991 was separated into two laboratories; namely, Phytochemistry and Pharmacology to reflect the nature of research activities carried out in these laboratories. |
