‘Miracle’ plant boosts health in Sierra Leone

A tropical plant said to be nutritional dynamite is being plugged by Sierra Leone’s government as a natural cure-all in the country, which has some of the worst health indicators in the world.

The Moringa plant, native to northern India, has been called the “tree of life” and its use is spreading in Africa, advocates say, where it can prevent diseases and malnutrition and even boost development by creating job opportunities.

In Sierra Leone, President Ernest Koroma himself regularly takes Moringa oil, one form of the plant, boasts Jonas Coleman of the country’s Moringa Association.

Agriculture Minister Sam Sesay described Moringa as “the most nutritious plant on earth, and each and every part of it has nutritional and medicinal values that have the propensity to cure over 300 diseases, including hypertension and diabetes.”

“Very soon, the cultivation of the Moringa tropical plant in Sierra Leone may likely put some medical practitioners out of business,” he quipped.

Doctors may not agree with that, but they do agree on the value of Moringa.

“It sure is a good herbal plant complementing our medical practice. Anything that provides good health is worth our nod,” said private practitioner Harry Sankoh in the northern city of Makeni.

In Sierra Leone, where some 70 per cent live on less than a dollar a day, only one in four children live to see their fifth birthday, according to UN figures.

The country, which was ravaged by a decade-long war which ended in 2002, has one doctor for every 17,000 people and one nurse for every 8,000, according to health ministry statistics.

It is unclear how the plant first came to Sierra Leone.

Freetown botanist Christian Jones, says: “It is likely that it was one Pakistani soldier serving in the UN Peace mission who discovered the presence of Moringa in the 1990s in the backyard of a house in the capital.”

Catholic NGO Caritas recently led a campaign to popularise the use of Moringa by distributing samples in the northern city Makeni, urging some 2,000 residents to replant them in their backyards and farms.