With the outbreak of Covid-19, which government officials and health authorities insist has no cure, people around the world have resorted to all manner of remedies to tackle the disease. Effective home remedies have been reported from Bolivia to Zimbabwe.
But the World Health Organization has been at the forefront of debunking fake news especially on social media about any cures. Media reports trumpet the message that Covid-19 has no cure.
Yet daily, patients are reported in every corner of the globe to have recovered from the disease. Now, that is a bit confusing. How do patients undergoing treatment recover from a disease that has no cure? Don’t the medicines and procedures they undergo constitute a cure?
The issue gets murkier when it comes to the so-called alternative medicine or home remedies. That term refers to “nonconventional” medicine from indigenous knowledge as opposed to medicines produced in laboratories.
Alternative medicine is viewed with suspicion and openly discouraged by governments, the health industry and the media. In Kenya, as elsewhere, practitioners of alternative medicine – usually dismissed as herbalists at best and “witchdoctors” at worst – have been arrested and their products and tools of trade confiscated. All this despite widespread knowledge of the efficacy of non-laboratory medicines in societies around the world since time immemorial.
Nation editor Caroline Njung’e described use of “nonconventional” medicines as clutching at straws (Sunday Nation, August 16, p.16). She was writing about the widespread use of lemon and ginger and other “concoctions” to fight Covid-19.
“What I have realised is that during a crisis that shows no signs of respite, people would clutch at whatever straws that come their way,” Njung’e wrote.
Such sentiments illustrate the belief that only medicines made in laboratories and certified by governments and health authorities like WHO should be used. But things are different kwa ground.
On Sunday, August 16, Sheikh Salim Mwega spoke on Mahdi TV’s Tiba Ya Kiislamu programme about a medication that heals all illnesses “except death”.
Of course he should not be making such claims on TV. Why? Because Sheikh Mwega didn’t say the drug has been approved by the World Health Organization or the Kenyan authorities. If it had, it would already be in use in hospitals and available in pharmacies.
Could Sheikh Mwega’s claim be dismissed as fake news? He and the people who have used the medicine would tell you it works.
Zimbabwean journalist Brezhnev Malaba posted on twitter on August 10 that he had a fascinating chat with a Harare man who survived Covid-19. “He avoided hospitals. What saved his life is a plant known as lemon bush tea or fever tea. It’s also known as lippia javanica or Zumbani (Shona) or Umsuzwane (Ndebele)”.
The aromatic herb is common in Kenya and Eastern and Southern Africa where communities have used it as a medicine since the hills were born.
The Harare man said you boil the leaves into herbal tea and drink. “I had tried all the drugs prescribed by doctors, but they were not working. I was advised by relatives to try Zumbani. It worked immediately. I coughed out all the greenish gunk from my lungs,” he said.
People responding to Malaba’s tweet confirmed the effectiveness of Zumbani. But people are not WHO or government health authorities. As far as these are concerned, Zumbani does not cure Covid-19 or any other illness.
The National Beekeeping Station in Karen packages and sells propolis suspension that it describes as “nature’s antibiotic”. The station says the extract is effective on colds, coughs, asthmatic bronchitis, arthritis, mouth ulcers, coronary artery diseases and many other illnesses.
Perhaps the packing and sale of this medication should be stopped until government health authorities and WHO approve it?
Are all the reports of “nonconventional”/non-laboratory cures fake news, or it is the usual politics of medicine to protect the profits of the health industry?
