The number of individuals and institutions in Nigeria laying claims to have formulated a cure for the COVID-19 virus is increasing by the day. The latest is coming from another Catholic Priest, Rev. Fr. Raymond Araju, C.S.Sp, a Spiritan and herbalist. He called the name of the new drug, ‘Chioma’ Fr. Arazu made this claim in an interview he recently granted Fides Media of the Catholic Diocese of Awka in Anambra State, and monitored by the Catholic Herald newspaper. “Every male in my family is a herbalist. In fact in my town Ihembosi, my village is Otukwe and a section of the village is called Eze Dibia, because every male there is a dibia, or herbalist.” Fr. Arazu who is over fifty years in the Catholic priesthood, says he started knowing about the properties of herbs from infancy. On how ‘Chioma’ was discovered, he said the extracts were mainly from plants.
The research was carried out with the help of his nephew, Reginald J.C Arazu, a traditional medicine practitioner and a Chartered Chemist with another friend who is a pharmacist. When Fides contacted Reginald Arazu, a former consultant with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), he shed more light on the project. “Humans normally have anti-viral, but we fortify it to take care of this. The underlying factors of this disease are generally the same underlying factors with every old person. As you age, certain parts of your body would stop functioning well and you would need to start treating them; these are some of the underlying factors with COVID-19. For instance, in this product, you have anti-malaria, you have anti cough drugs, anti diabetic, anti ulcer, anti cancer and immune modulators, particularly. These are the things we brought in to get this thing fortified.” Mr. Arazu also revealed that COVIC-19 only incapacitates the immune system of its victim, thus making the underlying factors to become more manifest, leading to death.
“You can see that the mortality rate is more pronounced with the elderly, because the elderly often suffer from hypertension, diabetes, ulcer, etc. “In our formulation, we thought of all those factors and brought herbs that would deal with them. So, if you have the virus, while we insert the immune regulatory to keep the immune system focused, we at the same time deal with the underlying factors. That is the whole idea of this treatment. We got herbs and put them together, and they are good. We also standardized things so that anywhere it is applied the same result would be gotten. The dosage is also well regulated.” Fr. Arazu, while revealing that the drug, ‘Chioma’ was produced using only local herbs and had also been proven efficacious, said that effort was on to get the approval of NAFDAC.
