Title: Throughput Screening of Natural Plant Products (NPP) to enhance significantly data generation and application.
Name of organization: Traditional Healthcare Integration Network (THIN)
Mailing address: PO Box 46665 00100 GPO Nairobi Kenya
Telephone: (+254) 0 722331147 / (254) 0722984386 / (254) 0724857898 / (254)0733829503
E-mail: tradihealth@yahoo.co.uk
Contact person: Dr. Andrew Chapya
Project duration: 3 years renewable
Essential program estimates: $ 42,000,000 (for 3 yrs)
Ethical clearance –None
Rationale: For lack of better options in many rural and semi urban communities, who comprise of 80% of the Kenyan population depend largely on plant base preparations and remedies for almost all their health needs. The country is still haunted by many lethal infections and infestations, typical of the tropical world; and, many social factors are related to health and disease. Nevertheless the poor in the country have limited access to preventive and curative treatment, animal breeding services, information, advice and veterinary drugs; Rural livelihoods are under greater strain than ever before. The project is to harmonize the Primary Healthcare (PHC) services and peoples needs especially for those disease and infections that are preventable (STDs, HIV, cardiovascular etc).
Goal: The primary Goal of THIN and partners is to exploit knowledge and desirable properties of selected plants tactics and make them accessible, affordable, safe and sustainable for use by the resource – limited rural and semi urban dwellers.
The proposal seeks to undertake research associated with rational and sustainable use of plant natural products through partnerships and complementary institutions; groups and individuals. The institutions include THIN with a strong background and capacity in health related research and development. It is to partner with other institutions/individuals/groups/with expertise in medicine, plant sciences, molecular biology, pharmacology, situational elucidation, microbiology, networking among others.
Summery
1.Although plant preparations and crude extracts of pants are widely used in Kenya, no attempt to promote traditional medicine alongside modern medicine has been made. This is owing to the fact that: first , the practitioners of traditional medicine and healthcare lack the knowledge of science and technology to modernize their trade, second, every traditional healer works on his/her own, meaning that information as to the various uses of plants and other resources are not easily available. And, although there are scattered researchers in various universities and institutes locally as well as overseas, these researches are not carried out in a systematic manner.
2.The striking medicinal and health knowledge being derived and applied from empirical knowledge of folk medicines in the identification of new sources of drugs is being increasingly appreciated as more and more biologically active compounds and secondary products are being discovered from local plants.
3.We know that many medicinal and medicinal and scientific researchers have experimented with drugs taken from plants after seeing folk healers use them. For example British physician William Withering noted in 1700s that several shrophire villages used the leaves of foxglove plants that have purple flowers to make a preparation for people with heart problems. Withering decided to test that plant preparation on himself and he reported the results in 1785. We now Know which active ingredient in the leaves that alleviates heart diseases symptoms. It is digitalis, one of the drugs used most frequently by heart patients to-day.
4.For these reasons, in 1974 while at the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE, with a colleague, Professor Isau Kubo from Osaka University in Japan and now Professor of Natural Products Chemistry, University of California Berkeley, USA, the author initiated an investigation of a number of East African plant species, to screen for both anti-insect and anti-microbial activities based on the information provided by the people native to the area and especially ‘’Bwana Mganga’’ (Swahili for medicine man). We also collected same number of plants at random.
5.During the preliminary screening for anti-microbial activities (see Pham Bull.) the results seemed to indicate that the information from ‘’Bwana Mganga’’ can sometimes be justified medically since we found the probability of observing some activity in ‘’dawa ya miti’’ (Swahili for Medicinal plants) extracts to be much higher than that found in the random sampling.
6One such observation is that when cholera strikes in the Kenyan rural community, the ‘’Bwana Mganga’’ tell then people to drink a brew made from the barriers of ‘’maesa bush’’. Extracts from the barriers chemically similar to Vitamin K, appear to block the enzyme of organisms known as gram-negative staining bacteria. Gram negative bacteria are responsible for diseases like cholera, meningitis, and some of the infections contracted during childbirth.
7.From the roots of the ‘’Red – hot Porker’’ tree, widely used in various folk remedies, such as malaria, syphilis was found to possess a strong activity against fungi and gram-positive bacteria. The exact was studied in detail and the substances isolated from the root, bark were found to be new natural products which show anti-peptic activity reported in a patent, as well as showing strong inhibitory activity against rabbit platelete aggregation.
8.From the East African ‘Green hut plant’ we isolated a compound that significantly increases’ the anti biotic effects of some existing commercial drugs, including those that combat certain fungal infections (such as Actinomyein) and athletes foot.
9.To-day, we live in a world where we can successfully control many of the human and animal pathogens with anti biotics. However, it is not difficult to document that the need for new antibiotics still exists. For example systemic infections caused by filamentous microorganisms-especially in patients with impaired or compromised host-defense mechanisms- are becoming increasingly serious worldwide. Yet the tropical plant species with built in defense mechanisms, which are renewable are as yet unexploited as sources of antimicrobial and other pharmacological agents. Nature is the greatest chemist. We just hope to use our sophisticated biological and chemical technologies (biotechnologies) to learn how nature does its work.
10. With increasing frequency, this systematic second look at the folk remedies is demonstrating that modern medicine may yet have something to learn from herbal and traditional medicines although still shrouded in secrecy and magic. Now we have the technology in chemistry and molecular biology to tell us why these folk remedies and medicines do what they do. The Bwana Mganga empirically figures out what these drugs are good for, although they cannot have known how they work.
At least we are not starting from a vacuum. THIN organization has over the years collected, and is still collecting medical as well as ecological information on more than 5,000 different plant species used by various local communities in different situations. We have gone ahead to test more than 2,000 of the collected plant species against different human and animal health conditions. – at our herbal health research clinic in Nairobi and by the communities themselves. The results are very encouraging.
THINS work calls for magnitudinal funding, extensive networking and partnerships in many fields of health and development. There is, however, a considerable challenge to manage such partnerships, not least to keep pace with a challenging world in which also the partners have to adjust and change. We need excessive dialogue to see to it that all the partners share the same vision as we go along.
Indeed everybody is busy minding his/her own agenda. But, we need some flexibility on both sides to make this process smooth and efficient. Issues arise that may relate to administration, planning or research mobilization. But there is an obvious bottom line that should help us solve these issues: we – the partners and supporters of THIN – share the goal of taking an obvious Research and Development agenda forward, to make a real difference, especially for the poor, and to do what it takes to get research results translated into efficient control and preventive strategies.
THIN should emerge as a unique partnership, bringing together not only volunteers, but also industry, private and public research institutions and foundations. And even more important Developing countries become full partners in THINS carefully selected Health and Development Projects, and programs. We can do more to line up to our mandates and respond to our peoples needs by rallying our forces in this close and ultimate way. There can be different models and coalitions. For example more than 98% of THINS budget comes from voluntary contributions most of which are non-designated. They have been special for over a decade. This is true partnership.
We need determination to invest in health.
We need even more determination to invest in long –term research aiming at solving health problems of the poor populations, and to keep doing this for decades.
THIN and partners are not about to issue a blanket endorsements of ‘’African Medicine man’’ but the closer we get to the scientific roots of traditional folk medicines the better and useful some of them look. Of-course the fact that a plant is alleged to be useful for a specific disease or condition is inadequate justification for accepting that plant as a valid means of therapy for the whole country and the world.
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