School pupils in Madagascar have been told they face expulsion if they refuse to drink a herbal tea their president claims prevents and cures Covid-19.
Andry Rajoelina, Madagascar’s populist leader, this week launched “COVID-organics” amid great fanfare, particularly on the radio and television stations he owns.
Developed from plants found in abundance on the Indian Ocean island, COVID-organics had allowed Madagascar to succeed where all other countries had failed, he said.
Not only would the product stop anyone who drank it from developing the virus, it would heal anyone who had caught it within seven days, the president told reporters. Two people had already been cured, he added.
“We can change the history of the entire world,” Mr Rajoelina said as he drank the first dose of the wonder drug. “Madagascar has been chosen by God.”
The product is being rapidly circulated on the island state. Soldiers in the capital Antananarivo went door-to-door on Thursday doling out sachets of COVID-organics, which can either be bought by the bottle or in powdered form to be mixed with water.
Not everyone has been as enthusiastic. Both the National Academy of Medicine of Madagascar and the World Health Organisation have expressed their concern, noting that there was no evidence to support claims it could cure the virus.
Clinical tests on the drug are understood to have involved just 20 volunteers and to have been conducted over a week.
Some Malagasy have also been sceptical. When schools re-opened on Wednesday after the Easter holidays, pupils were reportedly given the product and told that they had no choice but to drink it.
The parents of a 14-year-old boy in Antananarivo said their son had been told “to take it or leave”. Patrick Raharimanana, a senior opposition figure and former presidential candidate, alleged that some pupils had already been expelled for refusing to take the medicine.
A senior adviser to the president said that younger children would not be required undertake the COVID-organics course without parental consent.
None of the ingredients in the product is believed to be harmful.
It is chiefly derived from sweet wormwood and Ravensara. Sweet wormwood, a species of the artemisia genus that includes tarragon and mugwort, is known to have anti-malarial properties while Ravensara contains essential oils known to have medicinal qualities.
Several other world leaders, including Donald Trump, have advanced the unproven theory that another anti-malarial, hydroxychloroquine, can inoculate against the new coronavirus.
Mr Rajoelina’s television station, Viva, has sought to promote COVID-organics by screening a documentary featuring a Brazilian prophet allegedly predicting in November that a terrible disease would sweep the world but that Madagascar would save it.
Madagascar has recorded just 121 confirmed cases of COVID-19. No deaths have been reported.