The Annual Pharmacy Natural Products Expo is hosted by third-year pharmacy students, Mr. Yusuf Abubakar (Faculty Teaching Pharmacognosy) and Dr. Danladi Chiroma Husaini (Faculty Teaching Pharmaceutical Chemistry). The objective of the Expo is for students to assess and create a database of commonly used bioactive ingredients in traditional healing in Belize, to provide some updates regarding which traditional substances have already made their way into mainstream pharmaceuticals and how Belizean traditional healers will utilize such information to improve their products.

The guest speaker of the 2023 expo was Dr. Rosita Arvigo, DN, a herbalist and naturopathic physician, founder of The Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy and The Abdominal Therapy Collective. Dr. Arvigo is an international lecturer, author of eleven books, and was an apprentice of Don Eligio Panti and Miss. Hortence Robinson. Don Eligio was a revered Guatemala-born Maya Belizean healer who used traditional Maya herbal medical techniques to heal and cure his patients while Miss. Robinson was an esteemed Mexican-Belizean midwife and natural healer.

"With the passing of Belizean traditional healers like Hortence Robinson, Elijio Panti, Thomas Green, Percival Reynolds, and Beatrice Waight, we are reminded how precarious is a nation's intellectual heritage. They were members of the Traditional Healers Foundation and unselfishly shared their knowledge with the world. Their knowledge was deemed so valuable that the New York Botanical Garden established and maintained a decade long project, the Belize Ethnobotany Project under the direction of Dr. Michael Balick. Yes, plant names, uses, stories, myths, preparations and contraindications were recorded, but traditional healing is a science of the living. It is for the sick, the crippled and the maimed. It is for the troubled in mind and spirit. It is for those who seek help when medicine has no answers for them. Sadly, there are too few willing students. Belizeans, your precious cultural heritage is at a crucial stage. The sun is setting over your jewel. Your healers are dying out. They carried their torches bravely and selflessly for your benefit. What will you do now to preserve their plants, the medicine trees, and how will you contribute to the preservation of their life’s work? It is never too late to start...(Rosita Arvigo, 2023).

Learn more by visiting the "UB Pharmacy Natural Products Expo" Facebook page linked below.