Implications of adopting the 'Madagascar cure' by African countries. By Prof. A.O. Nwadinigwe and Ugomma

The Madagascar Corona virus cure, is from the plant called Artemisia annua (Family Asteraceae) also known as sweet wormwood, native in temperate Asia. It contains Artemisinin. Artemisinin is effective against Plasmodium falciparum, a highly resistant strain of malaria parasite. In 2005, China used Artemisinin to treat Corona virus Sars-CoV-2. 

 

Why did we deviate from single malaria therapy? 

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the Artemisinin-based combination Therapy (ACT), to replace chloroquine and single therapy antimalarial medication, when it was discovered that the malaria parasites were becoming more resistant to single therapies. The ACT provides a 2 phased treatment for malaria. According to the WHO (2019),  the artemisinin reduces the number of parasites in the first few days of taking the medication, while the partner drug, eliminates remaining parasites. The malaria parasite can easily overcome single therapies and form resistance to it. Especially, when people stop taking the medication after feeling better within the first few days of starting the medication.

The Madagascar cure or covid-organics

The Artemisia annua seems to be the main component that has been implicated in the treatment regime used in Madagascar against corona-virus. Madagascar claimed to have adopted this Artemisia annua and used the extract to cure Corona virus (COVID 19). The President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina also confirmed that it cured most of the corona virus patients. The world meters information on corona-virus still shows low death rates in Madagascar. 

The good news is Artemisinin has not been implicated in severe toxicity of human cells by any clinical trial. Countries with the lowest mortality rate in this pandemic seem to be African countries where malaria is endemic and use ACT often. Perhaps, it is worth looking at the relationship between artemisinin use and Corona virus treatment. Also other confounding factors can be analysed and correlated to death rate of corona virus, to see if mortality rate is significantly low, statistically. 

So is it worth trying as a cure to corona-virus by countries that use ACT routinely?  

Artemisinin is presently used in combination with other antimalarial medications, especially lumefantrine as ACT to treat malaria. In Nigeria, ACT is widely taken in the form of Artelumex- forte, Lokmal, Amatem, lonart, etc, to treat malaria without obvious problems yet. It could be argued that one will likely take ACT sooner or later to treat malaria, thus covering for corona-virus prevention/treatment.

Besides, there could be some implications for adopting artemisinin remedy for corona-virus,  as there will be a frequent use of single therapy medication thereby causing resistance to artemisinin. This will have a negative impact to future treatment of malaria especially in African countries where malaria is endemic. Artemisinin may then become ineffective in the treatment of malaria.

Again, it could give false sense of security to the public where the basic preventive measures like social distancing and lock downs are ignored because of the availability of a "cure".

These worries are beside the fact that artemisinin has not been licensed for the treatment of corona-virus.