MADAGASCAR is to receive $2.5m in funding from the US for its coronavirus herbal remedy named Covid-19 Organics which its scientists have unveiled as their contribution towards the global fight against the pandemic.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic late last year, scientists around the world have been searching endlessly for a vaccine to the virus. They are also working on potential remedies in the form of pharmaceutical drugs, trialling many anti-malaria medicines in particular but so far none of them has proved effective.
As a result of the island’s long isolation from neighbouring continents, Madagascar is home to various plants and animals found nowhere else on planet earth. More than 80% of Madagascar’s 14,883 plant species are found nowhere else in the world, making it an ideal location where a coronavirus remedy can be come across.
Madagascan scientists have thus come up with this Covid-19 Organics, a herbal remedy, which was made from local plants that are also used to cure malaria. According to the country’s president Andry Rajoelina, the herbal remedy has been tested and has cured people but the World Health Organisation (WHO) has pointed out that there is no proof of this, so has refused to fund its development.
According to WHO, the only hope in the fight against Covid-19 is the development of a vaccine but the Madagascar authorities said they will not wait for a vaccine and President Rajoelina insists the remedy can be used for both cure and prevention. As a result of his optimism, the US ambassador to Madagascar, Michael Pelletier has announced that Washington will fund the development of the drug with £2.5m.
Mr Pelletier said: “We are offering the contribution of $2,500,000 as additional funding granted to Madagascar as part of the fight against the coronavirus. The exclusive allocation of this sum in popularisation on the national territory of the solutions found.”
Other local sources say that three teams of Western researchers from Germany, Denmark and the US, have combined their efforts to analyse other cures. Apparently, they have looked at the preventive and curative scope of the use of Artemisia for the treatment of coronavirus.
