By Arjuna Ranawana

COLOMBO – You may know it from the Baila, Bivva neda Wadakaha Sudiya (බිව්වා නේද වදකහ සුදිය). The debacle that saw hospitals overflowing with very sick people who had consumed a concoction called Wadakaha Sudiya during a total eclipse of the sun, in the belief it would make a person very beautiful. That was in June 1955.  Today, in 2020, with the COVId-19 pandemic striking fear in everyone’s heart, with no cure in sight and a vaccine seemingly out of reach, the danger such concoctions pose to society is beginning to magnify, more so as they are promoted widely via television and in social media.

Case in point is a report from Kegalle district from the Sabaragamuwa Province on Tuesday (8), where tens of thousands are said to have gathered at a temple in the Hettimulla area, to grab the 5,000 free samples of a potion “guaranteed to give life time immunity from COVID-19” are being handed out.

Various quacks are peddling “cures” for COVID-19 on social media, claiming either to be able to prevent the novel coronavirus infection or actually cure the disease, are rampant on social media. At the last count there were at least 30 such “cures” doing the rounds on Facebook.

All of them are emerging not from allopathic doctors or registered Ayurveda physicians, but from others claiming inherited knowledge or inventions they have stumbled upon.

The current front-runner in the stakes appears to be emerging from the Kegalle area, where a concoction, promoted by a so called ‘shaman’ and ‘Hela’ medicine man, Dhammika Bandara, has received wide media coverage.

Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi, Minister of State for Vocational Affairs Dr. Seetha Arambepola, the Minister in charge of the COVID-19 pandemic Dr. Sudarshini Fernandopulle, have all been photographed trying out the ‘medicine’ in the presence of the media.

His concoction has been publicized in Parliament and on the widely watched ‘Big Focus’ interview program on a private television channel. His main backer seems to be Sisira Jayakody, the State Minister for Indigenous Medicine.

During the interview Bandara said he stumbled upon the concoction after “studying the COVID-19 disease.”

Bandara describes himself as being from the ‘Hela’ school of medicine, which is not the official indigenous medicine or ayurveda, the millennia-old science practiced in South and South East Asia.

The Hela School does not have formal training as far as it appears, but has been responsible for promoting a return to traditional foods such as ancient grains as a way of helping people with diabetes.

Bandara claimed in the interview that taking a teaspoon of his concoction three times a day for three days will make a person “immune from COVID-19 for the rest of his life.”

He also claimed that people who had been infected with the virus could be cured by imbibing the concoction.

State Minister Jayakody has said Bandara’s product is “food based and is not presented as a medicine.”

He also said that “clinical trials conducted at the Wathupitiwala Base Hospital proved that COVID positive patients were cured after receiving the mixture.”

The trials involved 15 to 25 people both COVID-19 positive and negative and a significant number were cured, Jayakody claimed, adding that the World Health Organization (WHO) had approved the usage of “traditional and time-tested methods of treating these diseases in combating COVID.”

That is not entirely true.

Recently, the WHO was presented with a case in Africa where the President of Madagascar made a bid to promote a drink based on Artemisia, a plant with proven efficacy in malaria treatment, as a cure for COVID-19.

It was met with “widespread scorn” but the WHO convened a committee, which endorsed a protocol for testing African herbal medicines as potential treatments for the novel coronavirus and other epidemics, an article on the issue on the world body’s website said.

COVID-19 has raised the issue of using traditional medicines to battle contemporary diseases, and the endorsement clearly encouraged testing with criteria similar to those used for molecules developed by labs in Asia, Europe or the Americas, the WHO reported on its website.

It also noted that WHO experts and colleagues from two other organizations “endorsed a protocol for phase III clinical trials of herbal medicine for COVID-19 as well as a charter and terms of reference for the establishment of a data and safety monitoring board for herbal medicine clinical trials.”

Phase III clinical trials would involve long-term testing using thousands of volunteers, both infected with the novel coronavirus and those who are free of the infection and will take months if not years. According to the WHO the testing would involve at least 3,000 people infected with the virus.

Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe, a former Director of the Medical Research Institute (MRI) and a former Asian Regional Consultant on infectious Diseases for the WHO, says for such a medicine to be administered to Sri Lankans,  clinical trials that follow “a strict methodology laid down by the Department of Health Services” has to be followed.

Abeysinghe said Sri Lanka has a reputed Ayurveda Research Institute at Nawinna and they should investigate the claims made by Bandara and their ilk.

“There can be no secret ingredients in a medicine we have, to approve to be given to the general public,” Abeysinghe said, as Bandara revealed his panacea contains bee’s honey, nutmeg and “two other ingredients that I am not willing to reveal at the moment.”

The Ministry of Health has appointed an expert panel headed by Professor Senaka Pilapitiya, Dean Faculty of Medicine and Allied Sciences at the Rajarata University to investigate Bandara’s potion and report.

In the meantime Bandara, whose day job is custodian of the Bhadrakali Temple in Hettimulla, has invited everyone to his temple in to get a samples of his potion free of charge on Tuesady.

The potion may be harmless, as State Minister Jayakody said, as it is some sort of a food supplement, but the grave danger lies in the minds of the people who believe in its unproven and untested efficacy.

Once they have taken the required doses, many of the recipients would sincerely believe they are immune to COVID-19.

Enveloped in a false sense of security they will not take the precautions such as wearing a mask, washing their hands and practicing social distancing.

These people will then pose a real danger to the rest of society.

-A version of this was originally featured on economynext.com