Skip to content

Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020

Is the WHO encouraging trials of an African herbal remedy as a potential treatment for COVID-19?

Esther Tsvayg, Gigafact
yes

The World Health Organization has endorsed clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of artemisia, a plant promoted in Africa as a treatment for COVID-19.

China has long integrated natural herbs into standard treatment protocols—both traditional Chinese remedies (using licorice and ginseng root) and western medicines are part of its official treatment plan for COVID-19. Outside China, there have been few efforts to apply the same rigorous vetting of traditional remedies that regulators demand for new lab-developed medicines.

In Africa, authorities were initially skeptical of claims early in the pandemic by Madagascar's president about the benefits of an herbal drink derived from artemisia annua. A byproduct of the plant, known as sweet wormwood among other names, is used to treat malaria. The University of Kentucky is also conducting research into the plant.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.