#COVID-19: Finally, WHO Endorses Herbal Medicinal Trials

#COVID-19: Finally, WHO Endorses Herbal Medicinal Trials—-Months after the President Of Madagascar pitched for the Covid-organics (CVO) artemisia based as a cure to Covid-19, WHO has finally endorsed a protocol for testing African herbal medicines as potential treatments for the pandemic and other epidemics.

The issue of using traditional medicines to battle contemporary diseases, and the endorsement clearly encourages testing with criteria similar to those used for molecules developed by labs in Asia, Europe or the Americas.

On Saturday, WHO experts and colleagues from two other organisations “endorsed a protocol for phase III clinical trials of herbal medicine for Covid-19 as well as a charter and terms of reference for the establishment of a data and safety monitoring board for herbal medicine clinical trials,” a statement said.

“Phase III clinical trials are pivotal in fully assessing the safety and efficacy of a new medical product,” it noted.

“If a traditional medicine product is found to be safe, efficacious and quality-assured, WHO will recommend (it) for a fast-tracked, large-scale local manufacturing,” Prosper Tumusiime, a regional WHO director, was quoted as saying.

“The onset of Covid-19, like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, has highlighted the need for strengthened health systems and accelerated research and development programmes, including on traditional medicines,” Tumusiime said.

In May, WHO Africa Director Matshidiso Moeti told media that African governments had committed in 2000 to taking “traditional therapies” through the same clinical trials as other medication.

“I can understand the need, the drive to find something that can help…But we would very much like to encourage this scientific process in which the governments themselves made a commitment.”