Health experts have raised alarm over the proliferation of unorthodox medicines across the country and the high rate of consumption of these drugs by Nigerians across different social strata, saying these natural products, though with proven medicinal properties, may come with severe adverse effects.
The experts say that natural medicines are not bad in themselves as virtually every plant contains some medicinal substance. Their concern, however, is that the unregulated manufacture, sale and consumption of these medicines are exposing Nigerians to public health dangers that even the manufacturers and sellers may not have thought of. They point to poor regulation and the country’s poorly developed health sector as the reasons that these drugs are proliferating with reckless abandon.
“Nigerians may as well have been using their money to buy what would kill them,” says a public health practitioner who does not want her name in print.
“Not that natural drugs are not good products, but there are issues. First is the non-certification of these drugs by the relevant bodies; second is the non-verification of the claims of the efficacy of the drugs. These drugs should ordinarily be put through laboratory test to ascertain their potency and whether they are even good for human consumption. But they sell these things, people patronise them, people use the drugs and that’s why they keep coming back,” she adds.
There has indeed been an explosion in the sale of natural medicines across the country in the last few years. The products on sale include Ginseng Root, Megacin Root, Goko Cleanser, Onum Bitters, Ashetu Bitters, Endocin Powder, Rinbacin Powder, among others too numerous to mention.
When BDSUNDAY went around Lagos recently, it was observed that pre-recorded voice of a natural drug seller is audible at virtually every bus-stop, market place and wherever people gather, calling out prospective buyers to come and try out their drugs which they claim cure every conceivable ailment. Sellers of these drugs mount loudspeakers atop roofs, electric poles or bamboo sticks, while they sit in hidden, ramshackle kiosks waiting for customers. At other times they come in cars loaded with an assortment of herbal drugs, with the pre-recorded voice playing out of the loudspeaker mounted on top of the car.
An advertisement poster by one of these medicine sellers sighted by BDSUNDAY on a wall close to one of the bus-stops claims to have cure for stroke, diabetes, syphilis, barrenness, gonorrhoea, ulcer, spiritual poison, tuberculosis, fibroid, rheumatism, infertility, staph, poison, irregular menstruation, broken leg, quick ejaculation, rabies, weak erection, etc.
At Balogun Market located at the Lagos International Trade Fair Complex, a loudspeaker sitting on top of a car was bellowing: “If you have malaria, take Onum Bitters. If you have typhoid, take Onum Bitters. Painful menstruation, take Onum Bitters. Low sperm count, take Onum Bitters. Headache, take Onum Bitters. Diabetes, take Onum Bitters. Sleepless night, take Onum Bitters. Bad dreams, take Onum Bitter…”
BDSUNDAY learnt that these herbal remedies actually enjoy high patronage from Nigerians, including the educated ones. Our further checks also showed that most of these drugs on sale are without any form of certification, while those with certification clearly state that their claims have not been verified by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). However, local government personnel are said to collect money from them and issue them with advertising permit.
Malachy Okpe, a chief pharmacist at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu, says the situation is really a worrisome one, especially because Nigerians who ingest these drugs do not know the implications until it is too late.
“It is not that natural products are not good medicinal products. In fact a lot of drugs are locked in many plants. It is one branch of pharmacy practice on its own. If you read the history of pharmacy it actually started from herbs. But the point is that you need to identify the particular component that cures what,” he explains.
“For instance, in a plant you may have up to 80 to 100 types of compounds or chemical components, so you need to separate them and identify the one that cures what and the one that harms the human organs. Almost every plant has medicinal properties and most plants also have poisonous substances. It’s not something you just come and bring everything together and start mixing,” he tells BDSUNDAY.
Okpe says because most of the products are not standardised, they can cause damage to organs like the liver, the kidney or even the heart. They may cure a sickness and trigger another sickness. They can also make the real treatment for a sickness harder because the patient has been exposed to sub-optimal dose of a substance that will make the organism responsible for the sickness stronger.
“They can also bring about a false sense of security, which has also killed many people. Someone might have an illness that an orthodox intervention can take care of easily, but the person will rely on herbal drugs that will be damaging or even make the sickness worse. For example, someone may have cancer and start using herbal drugs thinking that it is taking care of the cancer. This will make the time of real intervention longer, and the longer it stays the bleaker the prognosis. But if the thing was detected early and treated early, chances of survival would be higher,” he adds.
Okpe says a lot of people have approached him to treat the side effects of some of the drugs that they took.
“There was a pastor who came to me and said he developed serious diabetes after drinking Goko Cleanser. Another woman said after using the same drug she began to experience heavy flow during her monthly cycle which was lasting up to 14 days. There are side effects and adverse effects to the consumption of these drugs which we don’t often factor in,” he says.
Philip Anukwam, director, De-Lord’s Medical Laboratories, Satellite Town, Lagos, says natural medicines are not bad in themselves as a lot of research has gone into the production process of some of the drugs, including even the dosage and method of administration.
He adds that apparently because of the patronage that these drugs enjoy, especially from many lower-class Nigerians, the sector has attracted many quacks who have neither the calling nor the training to produce or administer such drugs, putting Nigerians in danger of ingesting poison in the name of drugs.
“The problem is that there are too many untrained people in the profession today. Joblessness and the desire for quick money are the reasons why there are so many quacks not just in natural medicine practice but in virtually every profession,” says Anukwam, who is also a naturopath.
“For instance, a young man who wanted to go into the practice came to me recently to put him through, but I told him that things were not done like that, that he should go and enrol at the Nigerian College of Natural Medicine, after which they would send him to the Lagos State Traditional Medicine Board for certification. When he went there and found that the process was rigorous, he told me he couldn’t do it. So he resorted to buying and selling of all manner of natural medicines that he doesn’t even understand their components. He’s now at Ikorodu preaching what the manufacturers of those drugs told him. If you ask questions about the drugs, he won’t be able to answer correctly because he doesn’t know, and he may be giving wrong prescriptions, unlike someone who has the proper training,” he says.
He tells BDSUNDAY how a lady came to him to complain that she bought one of these products and when she got home at night, she opened the bottle and took a tablespoonful as recommended. When she opened the bottle in the morning, what she saw was like ordinary water.
“Had she not been very observant, she could have been taking poison,” he says.
Anukwam says another source of problem is that because many of the natural medicine practitioners today do not have the requisite training, they just administer drugs without first of all carrying out proper laboratory investigation on the patient, which often ends up worsening the patient’s condition.
“A good practitioner does not give you medication without diagnosis. They will tell you to go for diagnosis and come back with the result before they can know how to treat you,” he says.
But beyond the direct health implications of ingesting these drugs into the system, Okpe laments that these advertisers also feed the unsuspecting public with a lot of misinformation.
“I heard one of them one day saying that taking injection when you have staph is a waste of time and worsens your condition as the disease will grow from staph to staphylococcus aureus, and your malaria will grow to the one they call typhoid fever and from there to cerebral malaria,” he says.
He blames the regulatory agencies, especially NAFDAC, for allowing these things to fester, saying Nigeria’s undeveloped health sector is also to blame.
He explains that the process of registering a drug and certifying it for human use is a rigorous one because of the dangers inherent in not doing a thorough check to factor in the long-term side effects. He adds that drugs have been recalled or withdrawn in the past when research found they had adverse effects. He mentions specifically drugs such as Analgin, Indocide, Chloroquine and Talidomite.
“It doesn’t mean that these drugs are not potent. Chloroquine, for instance, is very effective for malaria cure, but research found that the metabolism of Chloroquine produces a substance that accumulates in the retina which cumulatively causes blindness in later years. Talidomite was very effective as a palliative in early morning fevers during pregnancy but research found that children who were born after taking it were born with some parts of their bodies missing, such as limbs,” he says.
He recalls how, in the peak of the Ebola crisis, ZMapp, an experimental drug still under development, was successfully used on the American who contracted the disease but up till now the drug is yet to be approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.
“But our people, once they hear that Melina can cure headache, they just go ahead and take it, not minding if they die in the next five months or five years as a result of that. It follows the same pattern of abuse of even orthodox drugs among Nigerians. Someone will go to a pharmacy and request for a capsule of ampiclox,” he says.
“The other thing is even the moral angle. It is alarming the way these drug sellers say nasty things, mention the sex organs and talk about sexual activities in public places where there are children, with their loudspeakers mounted almost on top of the world. I think it’s high time the government stepped in to regulate the activities of these guys before they further ruin an already ruined society,” says Bayo Adedapo, a religious leader.
“And there is also the noise pollution angle to the noise they generate,” he adds.
On the way out, Anukwam says the government should wake up to its responsibility, pay attention to natural medicine practice the way it has done with orthodox medicine practice, sanitise the practice and insist on standards.
“In Lagos State, for instance, the Traditional Medicine Board is already in existence at the state Ministry of Health. They need to wake up and properly regulate the practice, insist that if you must practice you must attain some level of education and training, even if you got your own through inheritance. If every new drug mixture is investigated and verified by NAFDAC and the practitioners themselves are certified and properly regulated by the board, I think there will be sanity,” he adds.
CHUKS OLUIGBO
