The Institute of Traditional Medicine started as a Traditional Medicine Research Unit in July, 1974, and was later elevated to an Institute of Traditional Medicine in 1991 through an Act of Parliament no.9, section 10(1) 9c); when the then Faculty of Medicine acquired a University College status. It is charged with the responsibility to research into traditional healing systems, in Tanzania, and identifying materia medica, which can be modernized and developed into drugs, and useful traditional healing practices, which can be adopted for improvement of the health of the people.