African Traditional Medicine as a COVID-19 treatment and the South African Government response

Abstract

As South Africa faced the new dawn of COVID-19 pandemic, questions were raised regarding the utilization of African traditional medicine as a treatment of the illness. Madagascar was viewed by African people as a pioneer to regard and declare Artemisia as treatment for COVID-19 and developed products known as Africa following its breakthrough in traditional herbal cure for COVID-19 known as COVID Organics or CVO to be used by their citizens and the rest of African states. In July 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention formed a Regional Expert Committee on Conventional Medicine for COVID-19 in an attempt to enhance research and development of traditional medicines such as CVO, aiming to test traditional therapies and provide independent advice on their safety and efficacy. However, six months after its formation, it appeared that this attempt to regulate has failed to gain traction: None of the proposed remedies progressed beyond phase II clinical trials. Using existing secondary sources such as articles, government documents and media releases, this paper aims to look at the response from South African government on utilization of African Traditional Medicine as COVID-19 treatment. A special attention is given to South African government’s response to the treatment proposed by the state of Madagascar and its way forward towards using traditional medicine as treatment to COVID-19.