Traditional herbal medicine stall Place Djemaa El Fna Marrakech, MoroccoCredit: Andrew Woodley/Alamy Stock Photo
African herbalists need to improve hygiene practices and product safety to protect the public, a survey of herbal medicines sold in Uganda’s capital revealed. About a third of the products did not conform to the recommended international bacteriological standards.
The researchers, led by pharmaceutical microbiologists, Abdul Walusansa and Esezah Kakudidi, from Makerere University, Kampala, and colleagues from Islamic University in Uganda (IUIU), conducted a laboratory-based cross-sectional survey on a random sample of 140 medicinal herbal products sold in Kampala.#
They found that 35.7% of the herbal medicines were unsafe for human use due to non-adherence to permitted viable bacterial standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Also 59 bacterial strains were isolated from 32.1% of the samples. The strains were mainly Klebsiella pneumoniae (57.6%), Escherichia coli (20.3%), Staphylococcus aureus (11.9%), Klebsiella oxytoca (5.1%), among others. These can deteriorate the potency of herbal medicines, and cause disease outbreaks.
For Africa to develop its herbal medicine industry, and tap into strong global market potential, concerted safety mechanism need to be established, said Walusansa.
