Herbal remedies can help to treat neglected tropical diseases

“WHAT DO YOUNTD call traditional medicine that works?” “Medicine.” This old joke contains more than a milligram of truth. When, for example, Tu Youyou, a Chinese chemist, began testing the sweet wormwood used in local herbal remedies as a cure for malaria, her isolation of artemisinin saved millions of lives and earned her the Nobel prize for medicine in 2015.But not every folk cure is so closely examined—nor is every condition. Over 1.7bn people, most living in the world’s poorest countries, are affected by a group of 20 illnesses known as Neglected Tropical Diseases (s). These often lead to disability and place a heavy burden on health-care systems badly equipped to deal with them.