Published on:
In India, thousands of people have invaded a village for a promised miracle drug against Covid-19 after holy men and gurus started prescribing a cocktail of cow dung and urine as a miracle cure for the infection that , according to official figures, killed some 300,000 people. people.
The roads leading to the village of Krishnapatnam in the state of Andhra Pradesh were crowded with some 40,000 people, including Covid patients on oxygen, eager to get their hands on a concoction touted as a Covid-19 miracle cure.
Police have been called to halt rallies and have filed a complaint against a man distributing herbal medicines which he said would “help Covid patients get out of the deathbed in no time.”
the India time The daily said local Covid health centers show low attendance as people rushed to the seaside village last week.
The fray followed a separate prescription advised by Pragya Thakur, a parliamentarian from India’s ruling party.
âI consumed cow urine every day and it is a kind of acid that purifies my body,â the MP told supporters in his home constituency, Bhopal. “It purifies the lungs and saves me from Covid-19 infection.”
Experts urged politicians to show restraint. âThese leaders should stop recommending unscientific treatments,â said Ranjan Sharma of the Indian Medical Association (IMA).
The number of Covid infections in India topped 26 million on Sunday, largely due to a second wave blamed on several factors: a religious holiday, a wave of elections, the government’s late response to the pandemic and vaccine shortages.
Even as the second wave subsides, my rural patients have a different story to tell – that of the masses of people with fever, some dying, all without testing. Terribly worried that there is a surge of COVID in rural India that goes largely unchecked and undetected.
– Dr Arvinder Singh Soin (@ArvinderSoin) May 20, 2021
Experts say the combination of the four has also encouraged fraudsters and self-proclaimed healers to offer their questionable services coupled with bizarre drugs.
Dileswar Mahto, one of those unlicensed doctors, ran a thriving village health clinic near Ranchi, the state capital of Jharkhand.
âI can cure Covid patients in 48 hours,â said Mahto boasting in the village of Jurga. He claimed 60 people with mild symptoms of coronavirus he had treated have returned to their health.
Officials said quacks such as Mahto were “making matters worse” in predominantly tribal Jharkhand, which has so far reported 327,000 infections and 4,760 deaths.
âWe arrest these people and seize everything they sell as medicine,â said a health department official in Ranchi.
But in the heart of capital Delhi, healer Radha Kant Vats saw a crush of residents at his cow shelter search for his concoction of dung, urine, curd and butter to boost immunity.
Yoga Guru Prognosis
India’s billionaire yoga guru Ramdev has run into legal trouble after he allegedly called allopathy “stupid science” and modern medicines killed thousands during the pandemic.
IMA asked for an apology and said his comments were meant to scare people into buying a cocktail he sold as a remedy.
Ramdev’s household products company Patanjali claimed the yoga guru only read a transmitted WhatsApp message.
Medical warning
Photographs from the state of Gujarat showed people smearing themselves with a mixture of cow dung and urine, then washing it with milk, believing that exercise boosted immunity to the virus.
Cows are revered as holy in Hinduism, but medical experts have said the therapy could spread diseases from animals to humans.
“There is no scientific evidence that cow dung and urine work against the coronavirus,” IMA National President JA Jayalal said, warning of the possible risks.
âIn addition, the crowds that gather at cow shelters to collect feces and urine can lead to the spread of the virus,â he added.