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Ghana has accepted to receive a consignment of Madagascar’s COVID-Organics, which has been touted as a cure for coronavirus.
The Ghana Health Service said the West African country will resort to its Food and Drugs Authority to determine the efficacy of the herbal solution.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Thursday, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said he is not in a position to confirm whether Ghana will use the medicine or otherwise.
The DR Congo, Tanzania and South Africa are among countries who have ordered for the herbal cure and are examining it for possible use.
“I believe that a quantity might be made available to the country and we will ensure collaboration with FDA. They have to do some assessment and then we take it from there.
“So, I will not be able to say whether it will be used or not. But I think they have made an offer and we can take a look at it,” Dr. Kuma-Aboagye said.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) which has the sole mandate to approve the drug to be put on the local market said it would not do so until “the efficacy of the drug is proven”.
On local news outlet Citi TV, the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana’s Food and Drug Authority (FDA) Mimi Delese Darko said: “Yes, we’ve read about it (the herbal drug) but what we also look out for is evidence so you cannot just put a drug or a herbal product on the market without evidence and say it treats a disease.”
“So far as we’ve seen, it was tested in about 20 people over three weeks and come out with the claim of cure. There is no published study and what we would say is that we will need more evidence,” Darko said.
COVID-Organics is made from Artemisia, a plant imported into Madagascar in the 1970s from China to treat malaria. Artemisia has had proven success against malaria but the novel coronavirus, scientists have warned, is called novel for a reason.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against blind faith in medications that have not been held to “the same standards [for] people in the rest of the world.” The WHO continued that natural therapeutic measures against the coronavirus should also be critically interrogated “through rigorous clinical trials”.
On Tuesday, however, the African Union said it had begun discussion with Madagascar on the advertised potentials of COVID-Organics.
The AU statement said that it intends to employ the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), to “review the scientific data gathered so far on the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 Organics”.
“This review will be based on global technical and ethical norms to garner the necessary scientific evidence regarding the performance of the tonic,” it added.
Source: Daily Mail GH
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