Online herbal remedies: Quacks, desperate patients take over Facebook as healthcare collapses

The social media space has been inundated by herbal medicine vendors whose professional expertise cannot be verified. They disseminate various remedies and recipes for a wide variety of ailments and are readily patronised by citizens who in turn recommend their prescriptions to others, leaving terrible consequences in their wake, VICTOR AYENI writes

Twenty-six-year-old Olabisi Adelaja fought back tears as she struggled to make sense of the black hole of despair that had trapped her and her immediate family.

The fashion designer shuffled her feet, trying hard to dislodge the shame and guilt that she carried on her back, as each word escaped from her lips.

Adelaja, who lived with her mother and younger sister in Akesan, Igando, in the Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos State, was visiting a friend whom this reporter was with on that day.

Her sick mom, described as an amiable woman in her mid-50s, had just been discharged from a hospital, but her life still hung by a thread as the family hoped for a miraculous recovery.

After a moment of hesitation, Adelaja narrated her experience with intermittent pauses of self-blame.

She said, “It all started in late April. Our mother had high blood pressure but we didn’t know. It had been detected before but she didn’t give it much thought since she didn’t feel any symptoms until her left hand became paralysed and we took her to a hospital.

“The doctor said it was a mini-stroke but our mother was still able to talk and even eat. She was admitted to the hospital for a week, given medical care and discharged on a Saturday. She was recuperating at home, though we didn’t have enough money to afford all her medications.

“Recently, one of our mum’s friends visited us and told her to explore herbal concoctions as an alternative to orthodox medicine. She told us of a herbal concoction of raw snail soaked in ogogoro (a local gin distilled from palm wine) which she says cures stroke.

“She assured us that if our mother took this mixture, her stroke would be gone within a few days. To be honest, I didn’t know much about herbal medicine and I wasn’t sure how efficacious that remedy would be, but we followed her instruction. If I had known, I wouldn’t have listened to her.”

Adelaja said she rushed to the market that day to purchase the snail and a bottle of ogogoro. She was told to break the snail shell, soak the snail in the alcoholic beverage and give it to her mum to eat.

When she was done, Adelaja said her mother lay back on the sofa while she went out briefly to their church to pick up a clothing fabric that she wanted to sew.

She continued, “My younger sister arrived home before me and found our mum curled up on the sofa, convulsing and foaming from the mouth. She quickly raised the alarm and attracted our neighbours who rushed in to carry her.

“I returned home to see people struggling to carry our mother. I was so shocked that it felt as if I was having a daytime nightmare. She could no longer stand on her legs or even walk; her legs appeared to be paralysed completely.

“It was as if the stroke we tried to get rid of had returned with more intensity. With the aid of a Keke Marwa (tricycle), she was rushed to a hospital where she was admitted.

“In the hospital, she was barely conscious; her jaws appeared to be locked and she couldn’t eat or drink. They administered a drip on her and a urinary catheter was also used to aid her passing urine.”

Adelaja’s mother was rushed to the hospital on Tuesday, June 20, but after about three days, healthcare workers who attended to her were worried that her condition did not improve.

The hospital recommended that they transfer her to the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, but the family was already drained financially.

“We couldn’t afford the treatment. Even her friend who led us into this problem only gave us N30,000. It was frustrating. We had to plead with the hospital to discharge her so that we could take care of her at home and they did, so she has been home since then,” she added in a despondent voice.

However, on Friday, July 7, Saturday PUNCH was notified that the woman died the previous day. Subsequent attempts to reach Adelaja for details were unsuccessful.

But our correspondent gathered that the deceased’s friend admitted that she learned her snail-in-alcohol herbal recipe from a Facebook post.

Conflicting strokes for stroke

Using its search engine, our correspondent found various posts and videos in which snail slime was affirmed as a “natural remedy” for stroke.

Although this reporter did not find a specific reference to ogogoro combined with raw snail, other materials were recommended for stroke.

For example, a Facebook page named, Health Tips and Cure, in a post on May 9 wrote, “For stroke: mix your urine with pure honey and take three spoons each morning and night.”

On June 15, a Facebook user, Franky Brown, who described himself as “Dr Jeph” also made a post titled, ‘Total cure for stroke patients.’

The recipe which was posted to a public group, Ancient African Mystery of Herbs and Plants, prescribed a mixture of slime obtained from “at least 10 or 15 big snails” and plenty of garlic for stroke sufferers.

“You only need the water from the snails. Break the snails and put the garlic in them and keep them for like two days before using them. Take two spoons in the morning and noon,” he wrote.

Another Facebook user, Kabiru Idris, in a post made in Herbal Medicine and Natural Remedies on January 15, 2022, gave a varying remedy.

“Get some but very little bitter gourd leaves, add bird pepper and grind all together, and use it to cook a soup with a very big snail. Add salt and palm oil but do not add Maggi.

“Believe me, if you have a stroke, it will cure it in a few days and it will also prevent stroke reoccurrence. Both physical and spiritual strokes can never affect you. It is trusted,” he stated.

On July 26, 2020, a Facebook user, Nnamdi Eluwa, in a post which was shared by over 11,000 other users, also advised stroke patients to buy big snails, drain their slime and mix it with condensed milk.

He wrote, “Take three teaspoons in the morning, afternoon and in the night. Continue like this for one week. Your testimony will shake the neighbourhood.”

The post has since been flagged by Facebook as false information based on the findings of independent fact-checkers.

Findings by Saturday PUNCH revealed that these conflicting versions of herbal remedies for the same life-threatening medical condition were gleaned from questionable websites and social media accounts.

While two of these online platforms contained a disclaimer indicating that the information provided was the authors’ opinions, other contents were published by anonymous persons whose credentials could not be checked nor their professional expertise verified.

According to the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, stroke occurs when the blood flow that carries oxygen and nutrients to an area of the brain is blocked or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts.

The CDC explains that if the flow of blood which transports oxygen to the brain cells is blocked, the brain cells begin to die. Thus, a stroke can cause lasting brain damage, long-term disability, or death.

The agency also notes the different types of strokes: ischemic, haemorrhagic, and transient attack, which is also known as a mini-stroke.

While some studies have found snail slime to contain nutrients that are used as ingredients in skincare, experts have pointed out that the mixture of snail secretion with milk, honey, or gourd leaves cannot cure stroke.

A Senior Registrar of Internal Medicine at the Federal Medical Centre in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Dr Ayotomiwa Fagbemi, told our correspondent that suspected stroke patients should be directed to a hospital for proper care.

He said, “Stroke is defined as an acute episode of focal dysfunction of the brain, retina, or spinal cord lasting longer than 24 hours, or of any duration if imaging (Computerised Tomography or Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or autopsy shows focal infarction or haemorrhage relevant to the symptoms.

“This definition includes subarachnoid haemorrhage. It is a major cause of disability and death worldwide. The definition also shows that it could be a brain, spinal cord, or retinal problem. The commonest location is the brain.

“Mixing snail slime with condensed milk will not cure stroke. Patients with suspected stroke should be directed to the hospital for proper care.”

 Online vendors proliferation

Virtual herbal medicine vendors are filling in the wide gaps created by institutional and economic challenges.

The Nigeria Medical Association says Nigeria has about 24,000 actively licensed physicians who are caring for its over 200 million population as a result of the brain drain in the country.

The situation is made more precarious due to the prevalence of extreme poverty, as Nigeria has 133 million people living in multidimensional poverty, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Without a viable health insurance scheme, many Nigerians struggle to pay for health services.

The World Bank has estimated that Nigeria has one of the highest out-of-pocket expenditure rates on health at 70.52 per cent.

Fagbemi, during his interview with our correspondent, explained that herbal concoctions were cheaper and more accessible to citizens than orthodox medical care.

He added, “There is a rave of the use of herbal concoctions in recent times. Many factors could be responsible for this; one of which is the cheap cost, easy access, and availability of the products.

“It’s been sold everywhere from the car parks to the streets.

Studies have shown that herbal concoctions cause detrimental damage to the body’s organs, particularly the kidneys and the liver.

“The reasons people might be reluctant to go to the hospital are the cost of healthcare which includes the cost of drugs, time of waiting to see doctors, erroneous beliefs that herbal medications are more effective than orthodox medicines, some even believe their health care providers don’t understand their ailment and will prefer home remedy.

“Another factor is that advertisements of herbal concoctions are allowed and hence have more coverage than orthodox medicines.”

Virtual herbal vendors are not limited to markets in physical locations; they no longer need to move through communities in cars with public address systems. They now heavily make use of social media.

According to Statista, as of May 2023, there were nearly 41.6 million Facebook users in Nigeria, accounting for 18.5 per cent of the population in the country.

The same source also showed that in the third quarter of 2022, WhatsApp was the most popular social media platform in Nigeria. It was mentioned by nearly 95 per cent of Internet users in the country aged 16 to 64 years. In absolute terms, the number of people using WhatsApp was estimated at approximately 4.9 million for the full year 2022.

However, the report indicated that the count of Facebook users in Nigeria significantly exceeded that of WhatsApp in 2022. In that year, Facebook users were expected to add up to slightly over 36 million, representing a user penetration rate of around 16.7 per cent.

Moreover, considering the count of users, around 26 million citizens were potentially reachable by online advertisers on Facebook.

This increasing social media usage is exploited by herbal vendors who see it as a launch pad to reach their clientele.

When contacted by our correspondent on WhatsApp, Kingsley Onuzulike, who introduced himself as a naturopathic practitioner, claimed that his herbal products could tackle diseases such as cancer, stroke, brain tumour, hepatitis and kidney stones.

He sent some of his herbal recipes with a few graphic photographs to convince our correspondent of their efficacy.

He wrote, “The above picture is of cancer of the breast showing how it started in a full-blown stage and as it started healing. The second set of photos shows fibroids expelled from two ladies. This was done by the efficacy of our products.

“Our products can be applied physically or taken orally and they will produce results within three months. With N240,000, instead of millions of naira, we are out to add value to people’s lives.”

As it turns out, Onuzulike does not have a corner on extraordinary claims of curative herbs.

Facebook doctors, patients

For a period of five consecutive days, our correspondent joined three Facebook groups wholly dedicated to herbal remedies and monitored dozens of posts.

These platforms, with a total of over a million members, serve as a smorgasbord for all kinds of self-acclaimed “herbal doctors” and virtual patients in Nigeria and some West African countries.

Each post by a member is first approved by any of the group admins and it usually involves a request for an herbal solution to identified ailments.

The ailments often paraded by group members ranged from ulcers, sexually transmitted infections and cancer to diabetes, pneumonia, hypertension and fibroids, among others.

In some cases, the virtual patients simply list out their symptoms and the self-acclaimed herbal doctors offer them their definitive diagnosis.

In the comment section, various herb sellers and other users reply to the member, prescribing natural remedies to use and promoting different brands of packaged herbal mixtures.

Posing as someone with typhoid fever, this reporter made posts in the groups, asking for herbal mixtures to treat the bacterial disease.

When contacted, one of the respondents, Grace (surname withheld), urged our correspondent to buy mixtures she called “Blood Washer herb” and “Infection herb”.

“The Blood Washer herb will help you clean your blood of those microorganisms causing typhoid and flush it out. It also works for other diseases like Staphylococcus and gonorrhoea, That one is usually N20,000 but you can buy it for N10,000 because we are doing a promo.

“The Infection herb is specially made to treat all kinds of diseases. It is a multiple-action herb naturally prepared and you can pick it up for N7,000, promo price,” she said.

When our correspondent pointed out that Staphylococcus was not an STI or a disease, she stopped responding.

Another member, Dr Eze, who introduced himself as a certified herbal medical expert, told our correspondent that his mixture had the cure.

In a voice note he sent via WhatsApp, he said, “I am a certified long-established herbal medical expert and I cure different types of human infections and diseases using natural roots.

“If you purchase any of my herbs, you will see how fast they work without any side effects. They will cost you some money but you will be cured. I also have herbs to cure asthma, cancer, HIV, arthritis, fibromyalgia and I ward off sickness spells too.”

Interestingly, none of the herbal experts asked what laboratory diagnostic test confirmed that our correspondent had typhoid fever.

 Effective herbs abused

In his reaction, a clinical pharmacist, Chinedum Ucheaga, told Saturday PUNCH that the efficacy of herbs should not be underestimated because they have been utilised in conventional medicine.

He said, “Many people prefer herbs because they bring quick cure and we must not underestimate the efficacy of these plants because scientists have extracted very useful compounds from them and used them to actually manufacture drugs.

“In fact, there are experts in herbal medicine and through science, they have come up with medications to treat tumours, cancers, and many others. Like Africans, Western countries have also identified with traditional medicine (ethnomedicine) and it is working well for them.

“Modern research has enabled us to discover that plant activities lie in their secondary metabolites, which all plants possess. These secondary metabolites can be medicinal and non-medicinal. Ideally, plants are called drugs because almost every plant has one medicinal value or the other.”

However, Ucheaga noted that there were certain drawbacks in herbal medicine that could pose danger to those who used them uncritically.

“There are a lot of things that are not very ideal with plants. First of all, when these plants are extracted, most times, you end up extracting thousands of compounds.

“During the process of orthodox drug discovery, there is what is called characterisation through which useful compounds are identified through innovations like mass spectrometry and they are matched with previously identified compounds to see if they have different functional properties.

“But what happens with traditional healers is that most times, they just extract these plants, boil or soak them in alcohol to bring out their active ingredients but because they have not carefully secreted the useful compounds – though some of them actually try – sometimes, you’d have a plant healing back pain or eye pain and then on the long run it is causing tumours or damaging the kidney or liver.

“Because adequate research underpinned orthodox medicine, if there is a problem, it can be easily countered. For instance, if you take Flagyl and alcohol together, there is a kind of negative reaction that it can give you which could possibly lead to death.

“But when you use medicinal products being sold here and there, you can’t say what effect they could have on you after some months or years. They could result in congenital disorders or even make you sterile because studies have not been carried out on them.”

He further explained that there could be variations in secondary metabolites in plants which could result in different outcomes when taken as herbs.

“There is something called chemical races in plants. The bitter leaf that you picked from Ibadan will not be the same as that you picked from Enugu. Their secondary metabolites might differ because those cities have different atmospheric conditions such as light, humidity, soil and others.

“The time of picking those plants also matters. If you pluck medicinal leaves in the morning, you will get their active ingredients but if you pick them in the afternoon, they will be useless to you. Furthermore, if you pick some plants when they are mature they could be poisonous because some are better picked in their nursery.

“Inasmuch as I will subscribe to medicinal herbs, I will suggest that people do it in moderation. In Western countries, there is increased collaboration between herbal medicine practitioners and orthodox medicine experts but in Nigeria, this is not well unified.

“In Nigeria, there is still a wide gap between the drugs used in pharmaceutical stores and those packaged as herbal medicines; some of them have not been scientifically proven. Those who just wake up and claim to be herbal doctors usually cause disasters for people at the end of the day,” Ucheaga added.

 Fraudulent claim victims

A real estate surveyor in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, Mr Debo Akinsola, told our correspondent that he once purchased a herbal product for N30,000 but to his dismay, it did not contain the ingredient advertised by the vendor.

“I purchased a herbal concoction on Facebook said to contain castor oil but by the time I checked the list of ingredients listed on the small plastic bottle, there is no mention of this ingredient in it.

“Even its smell was so bad that I knew they packaged something else for me, but I couldn’t retrieve my money. I had to throw it away,” he lamented.

Similarly, an Ibadan-based chef, Titilayo Oderinde, said she once took a herbal concoction which resulted in stomach discomfort.

She said, “I was at a hairdresser shop when a herb seller came there and was advertising different types of ‘blood cure.’ I asked him for one that could help me slim down or at least reduce the size of my stomach and he gave me two of his products and I paid him. I took one of it that day and alas, I began to develop stomach pain and stooling.

“The stooling was so much that I had to resort to oral dehydration therapy because I had become weak. I couldn’t take the herbs again. Since then, I don’t patronise any of these products because you never can tell what you are swallowing.”

On his part, the producer of Polo Herbs, Solomon Ajayi, in an interview with a national newspaper, bemoaned the saturation of herbal medical practitioners in Nigeria, adding that most of them were more interested in making money than saving lives.

He said, “I believe everyone has their opinion on how they see herbal business in Nigeria. In my opinion, I believe most herbal sellers are basically interested in making money and not getting the right products to save the life of people. This is why people see them as not being regulated in Nigeria.”

Warning, crackdowns, safety

In April 2022, the Chairman of the Lagos State Traditional Medicine Board, Prof. Adebukunola Adefule-Ositelu, during an advocacy programme urged traditional medicine practitioners to be licensed in order to treat patients.

She said, “My advice to traditional and alternative medicine practitioners is to ensure they operate within the ambit of the law. No religion teaches us to disobey the government. There are laws for practitioners and the government wants us to enforce the rules. But there is a need to enlighten practitioners on what the law says.

“No practitioner is permitted under the law to treat or administer anything to sick people unless he or she has been licensed to do so. All practitioners must have a certificate of practice from the state government.”

Adefule-Ositelu added that herbal medicine practitioners should improve their practice through standardisation of their operations, proper book and record-keeping as well as data collection, and expose quacks for appropriate sanction.

In June, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control said it began an intensified crackdown on all illegal manufacturers and distributors of herbal medicine and other unregistered preparations.

The Director-General of NAFDAC, Christianah Adeyeye, told journalists in Abuja that the agency embarked on a raid following social media outbursts about the sale and manufacture of sacra herbs oral liquid by a factory in Niger State.

She said, “We have commenced a nationwide mop-up of the sacra herbs in circulation. We have also intensified the crackdown on all illegal manufacturers and distributors of herbal preparation and other unregistered preparations with a view to bringing perpetrators to book and minimising the usage of the substance.”

The DG also appealed to Nigerians, particularly those vulnerable, to desist from the use of the dangerous herbal preparation.

However, a pharmaceutical technologist, Oluwaseun Wusu, said agencies and citizens had more roles to play.

He said, “Not all these herbal medicine vendors have physical stores or factories that can be raided by law enforcement officers. They are now many on social media and some even go as far as paying influencers and celebrities who now use their influence to convince youths and their social media followers.

“To put an end to this, relevant agencies must step up their game and utilise digital tools. Citizens should also be properly sensitised when buying herbal products. Purchase from a licensed manufacturer and avoid fake, substandard, unlicensed, or contaminated medicines irrespective of their deceitful testimonies, and ensure that these products are approved by the regulatory bodies.

“Nigerians should also ensure that when buying the products, the dosage regimen should be indicated on the label to avoid overdosing or poisoning that can lead to deterioration of one’s health.

“In addition to this, it is pertinent to always be cautious of the recipe we see online. We must research the publisher’s profile, how the active pharmaceutical ingredient has proven to cure the particular ailment in the past before usage, and also inform a doctor when we are about taking the recipe.”