Scientists gathered in Grahamstown this week to discuss the invisible world around us. Lesley Cowling reports
MALARIA was the disease that in colonial times led to West Africa being dubbed “the white man’s graveyard”. The discovery of the white powder that put a check on it – quinine – helped the European powers to conquer Africa, but malaria itself was never conquered and today the search is still on for drugs that can defeat one of Africa’s biggest killers.
Quinine was discovered in the bark of a South American tree, but not by any scientific method – it was the knowledge of local people of the healing properties of the tree that led Western medicine to the solution.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Antimalarial Plant Research Unit of Groote Schuur Hospital returns to first principles in looking for cures for malaria and other diseases. In a paper this week, the unit’s Dr Motlalepula Matsabisa argued that traditional herbal remedies should be examined by the biomedical sciences for their healing properties.
He proposed information should be collected from local people on the medicinal plants they use, and entered in a database. The plants should then be examined for chemical compounds that could be used as the basis for developing drugs to treat, among other things, malaria and tuberculosis.
This means taking the plants into the laboratory setting, isolating all the different chemical compounds they are made of and experimenting with them.
However, Matsabisa said there had been “varying degrees of resistance” over the years from traditional healers about giving up their knowledge: “A number of issues, in particular, intellectual property rights, will need to be addressed if a harmonious relationship is to develop between the traditional healers and the scientists wishing to study their discipline.”