The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Many people living with sickle cell disease are using herbal medicine and not opening up to health workers.
Releasing results of the study started in March to establish the extent of herbal medicine use among patients seeking treatment at the sickle cell clinic of Mulago hospital, Dr Maria Asiimwe, a researcher at Makerere University School of Medicine says that most of the participants in the study said they started using herbs following television adverts promoting the herbs as more effective than conventional medicine.
Martin Lubega of the Department of Nursing at Makerere University who led the research said they carried out 384 interviews with both people living with the disease and their caretakers and found that 77.6% had at one time used herbal medicine.
61.2% were using them at the time of the survey. Asiimwe says they are now embarking on more studies to establish the safety of the herbs because of the dangers when patients start using them and abandon their prescribed doses.
She, however, noted that if used in right proportions herbal medicine can be effective citing studies done in Nigeria where some herbal medicines are undergoing clinical trials and are proving to be effective.
To her, with more research, some herbs could be purified and be made available for those that require them.
However, the sickle cell burden remains high in Uganda especially as a 2014 surveillance study by the Ministry of Health shows 13.3% of the population have a trait meaning they can give birth to sicklers if both partners had a trait.
Currently, the prevalence of sickle cell disease is at 1.3%.
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