Chad Bryan, Staff Reporter
With nearly 4000 students and just under 600 teachers, along with prison inmates and public and private sector workers being struck by the chikungunya malady, Jamaicans have turned to creative ways to help 'cure' the ailment, some of which have been claimed to work wonders.
Of the number of pharmacies contacted in Western Jamaica, some of them have reported that persons grated the kola nut or bissy into a tea to drink or have juiced the papaya leaf. This is believed to have worked.
However, aside from these remedies, a pharmacist in Westmoreland pointed out that to alleviate joint pains, one person soaked camphor balls in white rum and applied it to their joints.
Camphor balls or moth balls are small balls of chemical pesticides and deodorant sometimes used when storing clothing or other articles susceptible to damage from mold or moth larvae.
"All they do is soak it in the white rum and then rub the area for pain," she said.
Another person soaked marijuana in white rum and taken a panadol.
A pharmacist in Falmouth, Trelawny, explained that an individual has been peddling the Living Legend Herbal Immune Booster purporting that it can cure chikungunya.
"We haven't had anybody here using it. We haven't sold it either. I don't even know if it's approved," she said, mentioning that the label reads that it treats the chikungunya virus.
Drinking colloidal silver
Director of the Standard and Regulation division of the Health ministry, Princess Thomas Osbourne said this product has not been approved for the market.
Other persons have also turned to drinking colloidal silver more popularly referred to as miracle water.
One herbalist and spiritualist believes some of these concoctions actually work.
"They mostly work but the garlic and the guinea hen weed in a bottle of white rum and ginger and the pimento good for sapping pain as well as the papaya with garlic," he said.
Poison information co-ordinator at the University of Technology, Sherika Whitelocke-Ballingsingh, advises against the use of garlic.
"There are parents out there who are giving their children multiple pegs of garlic up to seven pegs, I heard a mother stated she gave her seven years old child seven pegs of garlic with other things for chik-V. This also can be dangerous to the child's stomach and health," she said.
Acting permanent secretary in the ministry and medical doctor Kevin Harvey, flatly stated that the remedies wouldn't work.
"None of them work. From a medical perspective none of them works. We don't believe in home remedies because they have not been scientifically proven," he said.
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