23/07/2024
Letter to BBC 2 re Horizon program 22nd July 2024
The Battle to beat Malaria.
I watched last night’s Horizon ‘The Battle to beat Malaria’ and was saddened by how biased it was towards pharmaceutical products. It gives the impression as if pharmaceutical remedies and vaccines were the only effective tools to deal with malaria. Effective plant medicines were used in the past and are being used today.
The Chinese scientist Tu Youyou received the Nobel Prize in 2015 in the field of Physiology and Medicine for her 1971 exploration of sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) that was traditionally used to treat intermittent fevers and malaria. Tu Youyou extracted the ‘active ingredient’ or artemisinin. Tu Youyou’s research yielded remarkable results, in that this work led to the acceptance of sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) as a medicinal agent, and soon it began to be commercially grown on a large scale.
The huge advantage of using Artemisia annua for people in Africa and other affected countries is the availability and very low cost compared to pharmaceutical products. There are organisations that train people how to grow the plant, how to process and how to prescribe it. The use of Artemisia annua helps people to help themselves.
