Doctors have blamed late presentation of Covid-19 patients to health facilities and high numbers of virus deaths in the country on herbal medicines being marketed as treatment for Covid-19.

The doctors question the effectiveness of herbal medicines, which the government has permitted to be used in people with Covid-19 symptoms, saying the medicines must be subjected to clinical trials to prove whether they work.

Pharmacists and experts in natural medicines, however, say herbal medicines deserve equal chance to be used in care for Covid-19 patients like synthetic drugs because there is still no proven cure for Covid-19, which has so far killed more than 2,832 people in the country and infected more than 93,000 since its outbreak last year.

They also say the existing clinical trials procedures are tailored for synthetic drugs and may not work for herbal medicines formulations.

The herbalist say the medicines are safe because they have been used since time immemorial, and that they are obtained from plants that people consume.

Covidex, one of the widely used herbal medicines, has been given emergency use approval by the National Drug Authority (NDA) as supportive treatment for Covid-19 as it awaits clinical trials to confirm scientifically whether it actually works, but others are being used without any assessment from the regulator.

Dr Rosemary Byanyima, the deputy executive director of Mulago National Referral Hospital, says it is absurd that products which have not undergone clinical trials to determine whether they work are being recommended to patients as treatment.

“Some people underplay the symptoms of Covid-19 and when they [Ministry of Health] started home-based care, they thought they would use concoctions and get well. Of course, some lucky ones recover but then others progress to severe disease and they end up presenting late to hospital,” Dr Byanyima says.