The National Chemotherapeutical Research Institute is a government research and Development Centre under the Ministry of Health. It was created in 1964 with the mandate to carry out applied research on natural products and with the view of justifying therapeutical claims from traditional healers in Uganda. This also provides an avenue for promoting the consumption of natural herbal medicine without causing any alarm of the side effects. Dr. Grace Nanbatya Kyeyune the Director of the institute says, there was a lot of pressure from a group of traditional healers immediately after independence; “The pressure that was coming from the traditional herbalists saying they wanted to treat Ugandans the traditional way became too much on government that the traditional healers were granted a laboratory/centre to validate their concoctions,” says Dr. Nanbatya.
