Artemisia, a miracle plant?

Audio 2:45

By: Florent Guignard

The president of Madagascar Andry Rajoelina provoked in Africa a real craze around artemisia, by claiming that this medicinal plant treated Covid-19. But no study has shown it to date.

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Coup de théâtre and poker coup last month in Madagascar: President Andry Rajoelina is engaged in a real political show around a plant, artemisia annua , endemic to the big island, already used to treat malaria. And now able, he says, to heal Covid-19. "  In this war against the Covid, our ammunition will be nature,  " enthuses Andry Rajoelina, drinking a can of Covid Organics, an herbal tea made from artemisia, promoted as a national drink. Except that to date, no study has demonstrated the effectiveness of artemisia against the new coronavirus. Even if the plant was already used in China, in 2003, to treat Sras.

Artemisia has been used for more than 2000 years in traditional Chinese medicine, and it even had a role in the Vietnam War, as told by Lucile Cornet-Vernet , a French woman passionate about the plant since one of her friends was cured of malaria thanks to herbal teas made from dried artemisia leaves. “  Ho Chi Minh had asked Mao if there was not a plant to treat his soldiers affected by malaria, and of all the plants used by traditional Chinese medicine, artemisia emerged as being the most effective against malaria.  "

Lucile Cornet-Vernet founded the Maison de l'artemisia, a network established in 23 African countries, to cultivate artemisia and use it to treat malaria. The World Health Organization, however, recommends artemisia only as a supplement to another antimalarial treatment, to avoid the development of resistance. Researchers have also found concentrations of artemisinin, the active agent against malaria, which are too disparate according to the plants, depending on where they were cultivated or how they were infused.

Prices multiplied by five

Lucile Cornet-Vernet has his own artemisia plants in his vegetable garden nestled in the heart of a forest in the Oise, north of Paris. And it is inexhaustible on the virtues of the plant, which a Nobel Prize in medicine has also dedicated, awarded in 2015 to the Chinese Tu Youyou for her work on malaria and artemisinin, one of the very many principles active ingredients contained in this medicinal plant par excellence. “  Plants are in nature, like us. And they have to fight pathogens like us. They test lots of molecules, keeping those that help them grow. 70% of our medicines are derived from plants.  "

Since the promotion of Covid Organics in Madagascar, artemisia has been the subject of a real craze on the African continent. This has led to perverse effects in this rainy season, the malaria season. Artemisia has become scarce, to the point that several Artemisia Houses, in Mali and Gabon, have found themselves out of stock. The Artemisia House of Benin, for its part, had to ration its production, so that malaria patients do not miss it. Pablo Kakpo, its vice-president, saw “ people buying large quantities of them, to speculate. The bag of dried artemisia leaves usually sells for 2,000 CFA francs. The same sachets, he says, were found in Gabon at 10,000 CFA francs. Prices multiplied by 5. Which is expensive herbal tea which nothing yet proves to be effective against the Covid-19.

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• Health and Medicine
• Madagascar
• Coronavirus

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