Kudakwashe Vhenge
Government has allowed the use of traditional herbal medicines in Covid-19 patients.
This is in a bid to fight the pandemic which has since claimed thousands of lives throughout the world.
To date Zimbabwe has nine confirmed cases of corona virus and one death.
This comes at a time when there is outcry over testing covid-19 vaccines in African countries by European medical scientists.
Director for Traditional Medicine in the Ministry of Health and Child Care, Obey Ndoro advised that registered Traditional Medical PRACTITIONERS (TMP) are allowed to prescribe, and administer traditional medicines to Covid-19 patients only with their consent.
In a letter addressed to Director of Health for City of Harare Dr Prosper Chonzi, Ndoro made reference to one Kenneth Chivhizhe a traditional medical practitioner who has a herbal medicine believed to alleviate symptoms related to Covid-19.
Ndoro added that there is need to monitor the patients taking the herbal medication.
“Kindly assist him (Chivhizhe) to help patients that may be willing to use his herbal product. Please note this is by the consent and choice of the patients.
“We may want to monitor response from volunteering patients,” read the letter.
The first Covid-19 cases was reported in China’s Wuhan Province on the 31st of December in 2019.
Barely four months later more than 1 million people have been infected while over 62 000 have succumbed to the deadly virus globally.
The virus which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) has no cure yet and there are a lot of clinical trials for its remedy that are currently being rolled out in different parts of the world.
