Yes, perhaps you could remember I have said it on this page and elsewhere that malaria has been my lot all my life, save for the years spent studying or working in non-malarial countries such as Egypt, England and South Africa (yes, South Africa is so almost malaria-free). In fact, I once even contemplated setting up a National Association of Chronic Malaria Sufferers (NACMS), with myself as Chairman. Not anymore, alhamdu lillah!
Allah has opened my eyes and solved my long-time malaria ailment through the intervention of Herb 25, a simple anti-malarial I have used only recently. And I had waited three full months before I could make this announcement. Yes, Hear O World! For the first time in my Nigerian life, my malaria has NOT recurred for a whole three months. A first! The fact is that I used to come down with malaria almost every month or less, Lonart, Amatem, Fansidar, Quinine and others notwithstanding. The Hausa are right in their universal saying: “Ruwan da ya dake ka shi ne ruwa!” (Meaning: ‘The rain that beats you IS the rain’.) For me, Herb 25 is THE rain!
Herb 25 is an effective, safe, cost-effective and a sustainable drug for Nigerians suffering from malaria (such as your columnist). A culmination of twelve years of research, Herb 25 was developed by our good sister, Dr. Hadiza Nuhu OON, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Pharmacognosy and Drug Development of Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria, and herbal medicine practitioner. Herb 25 is packaged as tea bag for ease of dispensation.
According to herbalpointservices.com, the website of Herbal Point Services, Hadiza’s drugs research firm, Herb 25 was researched and developed “in view of the outrageous malarial statistics and glaring suffering of the Nigerian people.” The firm was established in 2004 in Zaria, the site continues to say, “with the aim of research, documentation and development of Nigerian medicinal plants as alternative drugs for the Nigerian people. Herbal Point liaises actively with…research institutes. It has developed many popular herbal remedies and provides free professional consultation to the local community (who largely utilize herbal medicine) on use of plants as food and as medicine…”
For this feat of developing Herb 25, Hadiza, who is a PhD in her research area, was conferred with the National Honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) by late President Yar’adua in December 2008. Herb 25 is registered with NAFDAC, and its registration number is A7-0155L. The drug has the distinction of being the first herbal formulation ever registered by any staff in any Nigerian university, ma sha Allah! Apart from Herb 25, Herbal Point also has drugs for Typhoid (Herb 55); Diabetes (Herb 5); High Blood Pressure (Herb 2); among many others.
As a tea bag, I have taken the recommended dose of one bag morning and evening in hot water (as one would take tea) for seven straight days and, alhamdu lillah, I swear with wallahi I have never felt better in the past several years, ‘100 Days’ notwithstanding. Gone in sha Allah are those days when I would wake up in the morning and, instead of feeling refreshed and raring to go, would feel headachy and stiff-necky. Banish them, headache and stiff neck. Herb 25 has put paid to those, alhamdu lillah!
And many thanks to my academic colleague Zainab Tukur of Bayero University, Kano (whose academic research has been dedicated to that dreaded ailment of malaria, and for which I pray Allah to repay her abundantly) for generously buying two packets of Herb 25 at Jifatu Stores on Zaria Road, Kano and personally delivering same to my office. She it was who continued to encourage me to ‘try it, try it, try it!’ And I finally did! And what a trial!
My Doctor (he of the ‘Take Up Golf and Shed the Kilos’ theory and practice of weight-loss) used to attempt to ‘murder’ me every month with the kind of anti-malarials he administered on me. In fact, sometimes I wonder if he is not an agent of those big pharmaceutical companies intent on trying out their malaria drugs on folk such as me. He gets me to take every new drug on the market and, but for the fact that he, too, is a chronic malaria-sufferer (and would have been Secretary of NACMS), I would have called him ‘Dr. Trovan’. Some of the drugs he used to give me were worse than the malaria itself. Some, after taking just one course, would make me into a useless piece of human rag, so pitiful I would become with my biology, chemistry and physics all upside down. Not anymore, alhamdu lillah, with Herb 25.
There is no way Herbal Point can undertake publicity and advertisement on the scale of other global anti-malarials, whose profits are in the billions of dollars. So consider this my and our newspaper’s contribution to making public this wholly-Nigerian product, and which works! It is hoped, says Herbal Point, that all stakeholders including the Government could come together to make the product reach particularly those most at risk and pave the way for an effective, affordable, accessible and sustainable chemotherapeutic agent against malaria for Nigeria and Africa.
Now, I am sure those whose lives are intertwined with Insecticide Treated Nets (so-called ITNs) and the big-name drugs on the market, as well as the health and medical policymakers and hangers-on, would perhaps want to attack the use of ‘unorthodox’ Herb 25. Now let me tell them: this Hadiza is a PhD, like many (and perhaps more than most) of them; she has put in twelve years of research into this business; and if she knows there would be any side effect to Herb 25 one way or the other she would have said so on the pack, the accomplished academic and researcher that she is. And for the fact that Herb 25 is registered by NAFDAC (that agency of government which ‘shines its eyes’ before registering such medicaments) the drug is legit and safe.
Now with Herb 25, the malarial ‘cure’ is at hand, and what remains is the ‘prevention’. Malaria will never end in Africa and Nigeria as long as our environment is dirty. As long as there is stagnant water and rubbish heaps there will continue to be a habitat for the mosquito to continue to multiply and bite us, young and old, and give us malaria. A century ago there was malaria in Europe, but when they invented the sewage system, they buried stagnant water with malaria, cholera, typhoid and other vector-borne diseases. We must do that in Africa and Nigeria.
In an earlier piece on this page titled MURDERER, I had said: “The greatest murderer in history is, surely and without doubt, the arrogant but feeble mosquito, one of the smallest of the Lord’s creatures (and may the Lord perish it). The mosquito, sole distributor of malaria, wholesaler and retail monger of Africa’s greatest malady, seems to defy all efforts to bring it under control.
I had also said “We have used the so-called Insecticide Treated Nets (ITN), we have used mosquito coil, we have used Shelltox, and Mobil, and Rambo, and Ota Pia-Pia, and all sorts of gadgets and insecticides and poisons to rid ourselves of this Millennium under-Development Gallivanter (MuDG) called mosquito, yet the slim devil, the harbinger of malaria, has refused to go away. And we have nothing against slims.” May Allah perish this slim! (And that has nothing to do with the fact that I am weight-challenged! And over to you, Herbal Point: anything for One-At-A-Time Please?)
