Lebanese turn to herbs as health care costs rise

Mohamed Abdeen, a former gymnastics coach, runs a small pharmacy in northern Lebanon that offers cheap herbal remedies to clients exhausted by chronic drug shortages and high prices.

These practices go back thousands of years and are known as alternative medicine or herbal medicine, and rely on wraps of herbs, spices and natural oils, and patients get them in an attempt to treat diseases, including cold, cough and stomach pain.

Abdeen belongs to a family of pharmacists in the coastal city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon.

After an economic downturn that lasted nearly three years, the demand for his medicines is increasing.

"People, when prices went up on them and medicine, and so on, started resorting to this medicine," said Abdeen, who is 53 years old.

According to an Amnesty International report issued in December 2021, the Lebanese currency has lost more than 90% of its value since 2019, while medicine prices have quadrupled.

In September, the United Nations warned that health care would not be within reach of 33% of families in Lebanon.

More than half of them will be unable to obtain medicines either because they are expensive or because they are not available in pharmacies.

Weeks after this warning was issued, the severely underfunded government lifted subsidies on most drugs, including those that treat chronic diseases such as cancer, causing new price increases.

Tripoli was particularly hard hit by the financial collapse in Lebanon because the United Nations ranked the city as the poorest on the Mediterranean even before the crisis began.

Abdeen said that his customers come to him after being informed by the requests of doctors and hospitals, "You want medicine for infections, you want blood test, do a test for me, work for me... they perish, they perish."

He added that, therefore, he offers them alternatives such as zobaa, a Lebanese herb such as thyme, added to tea to relieve sore throats.

Pharmacist Omar Al-Rafei said people are turning to plant-based medicines for even the most serious diseases.

Al-Rafi'i said, "The medicines have become very expensive. For example, diabetes medicine can be entitled to something like one million or one million and two hundred thousand," i.e. nearly double the minimum wage in the country, which is about 600 thousand pounds.

The 48-year-old herbalist said, "He can buy something herbal from us for fifty thousand, let's say."

Warning of the dangers, Caretaker Health Minister Firas Al-Abyad said that the Ministry of Health knows that there are cancer patients who take herbal medicines because their treatment is no longer available.

"This is worrying. This is not an alternative, and a lot of people don't understand this," he told Reuters.

While medicines undergo rigorous testing to determine their efficacy and potential side effects, there are no standards for the herbal medicine industry.

Al-Abyadh said the lack of a central laboratory in Lebanon that does its own tests and issues regulations leaves the door open to widespread abuse using "untested substances" such as a plant-based treatment.

Joe Salloum, head of the Lebanese Pharmacists Syndicate, said that the occasional use of herbal wraps can relieve pain, but doses that are not predetermined can have health risks.

Follow our latest local and sports news and the latest political and economic developments via Google news