Mongolian Herbal Medicine, A COVID Revival Takes Root
Traditional medicines, once banned, have regained favor. Government and health officials are endorsing them alongside COVID-19 vaccinations.
Steeping manjingarav, a local herb, in hot water in Orkhon province, Mongolia.
Khorloo Khukhnokhoi
CoronavirusGLOBAL PRESS JOURNALMongoliaSourcesCountries
ERDENET, ORKHON PROVINCE, MONGOLIA — The water steams, then bubbles to a boil. Bayarjargal Togmid takes the pot off the stove and stirs in a bright yellow grass, known as manjingarav.
"This plant is excellent against coughing," she says. "I drink it now and mix it with water so that my children often gargle their throats and mouths with it. It is far more effective than regular medicines."
Bayarjargal grew up watching her mother harvest medicinal plants for her work as a botanist, but says she only began brewing cough syrup for her own family after the pandemic began. She and her husband got vaccinated last year, but she credits their use of traditional medicine — both homemade and supplied by a nearby clinic — for strengthening their immune systems. When her husband eventually contracted COVID-19, in February, he recovered within five days, she says.
A surge of traditional medicine users
Mongolia's traditional medicine has 5,000 years of history, but nearly disappeared forever due to an official ban between 1922 and 1990. The pandemic has prompted a surge of new users seeking protection and relief from virus symptoms — and newfound popularity as a source of national pride and income opportunities.
"Our ancestors left us with a rich source of knowledge of traditional medicine," says Dr. Bold Sharav, a professor of traditional medicine at the Mongolian International School of Medicine. "It is important that we use it in the right way."
The Ministry of Health includes herbal teas and decoctions in its COVID-19 home care treatment packages, distributed to family health centers nationwide and provided free of charge to any adult diagnosed with the disease. Oyunchimeg Murdorj, a senior expert in charge of traditional medicine at the Ministry of Health, says the contents of the kits are based on recommendations from doctors and researchers.
Mongolia's doctors endorse traditional medicine — but in conjunction with modern medicine, not in place of it.
"In the last two years, Mongolian scientists have experimentally validated more than 50 types of medicinal plants and started using them for medical treatments," says L. Batkhuu, coordinator of foreign projects for the Institute of Traditional Medicine and Technology, a research center that also operates a hospital and pharmaceutical factory. The government should make greater investments in research, development and production to meet the growing demand, he says.
Oyunchimeg counters that the Ministry of Health has helped bolster traditional medicine practitioners through training and research centers. "Research in traditional medicine has improved in recent years," she says. "Once the research is well developed and in line with international standards, the government will have a policy on exports."
Tergel Munkhsaikhan, right, head of Sud-Pharm pharmacy in Orkhon province, explains the uses and effectiveness of traditional medicines to Oyu-Erdene Battumur.
Along with modern medicine
Dr. Gereltuya Surenkhorol, an infectious diseases specialist at Orkhon Regional Diagnostic and Treatment Center, says that recommended COVID-19 herbal treatments like Mana-4 and Norov-7 don't fully cure the disease, but boost the human immune system and increase recovery speeds — and should only be used as directed.
"It is even likely that medicinal plants could be harmful, if one does not use a proper dose," she says, warning that some plants could be poisonous.
Pharmacists across the country say they were not prepared for the pandemic-related surge in traditional medicine requests, and they expect the interest to outlive the virus itself. "Now, traditional Mongolian medicines, decoctions and preparations are most sold," says Altantuya Sanduidorj, a pharmacist in Orkhon province.
Otgongerel Sukhbat, an economist in Orkhon province, says she had been vaccinated for COVID-19 and had begun drinking Mana-4 and Norov-7 teas when she got infected in April 2021 with the disease. She recovered within a week, and plans to continue to use the treatments along with modern medicine.
"Initially, it was hard to drink it, as it was quite bitter," she says. "Now I am almost accustomed to it."
More government support needed
Demand has been growing from international markets, including Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands, according to the Ministry of Health's Department of Traditional Medicine. International research remains rare, but in a 2021 study by Mongolian researchers published by the Journal of Asian Medical Students' Association, COVID-19 patients who used both Mongolian herbal medicine and Western treatments recovered 1.7 times faster — 42% of them within one week — than those who only used a single type of treatment.
Of the eight Mongolian manufacturers producing close to 400 traditional medicine products, only four are currently licensed for exporting. In 2017, Odi Tan became the first company to obtain this approval after a months-long process involving the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and the Specialized Inspection Agency.
Medicinal plants and herbs could contribute to the economy as much as coal export does
"Since coronavirus broke out, pharmacies have started constantly reaching out to us, asking which medicines and preparations are recommended for colds and influenza and what kinds of products are available, further proposing to collaborate," says Chantsaldulam Baatar, Odi Tan's executive director.
The company has customers in other Asian countries, but doesn't yet have the capacity to reach Europe and North America, Chantsaldulam says. So it has focused on growing its supply chain by paying families to cultivate ingredients like nettles, thyme and licorice.
"If the government supports us better and facilitates the opportunities for export, medicinal plants and herbs could contribute to the economy as much as coal export does," she says.
The government is working with pharmaceutical companies to ensure that products meet national and international quality and safety standards, says Batkhuu, the foreign projects coordinator from the Institute of Traditional Medicine and Technology. His team is working on submitting a funding request for building a large factory that would have the capacity to process and produce raw materials.
"In the future, we will be able to fully meet our domestic consumption, and export," says Bold, the traditional medicine professor.
More education also is needed to ensure that the booming interest among Mongolians doesn't lead to harmful effects to people or the environment, says Bayarjargal, the Erdenet mother. "If you don't pick natural herbs properly, there is a danger that the plants will not grow again," she says. "It is also important to identify and pick the right non-toxic plants."
Khorloo Khukhnokhoi is a Global Press Journal reporter based in Mongolia.
Translation note: Otgonbaatar Tsedendemberel, GPJ, translated this story from Mongolian.
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GLOBAL PRESS JOURNAL
Modi Is Wrong: Russia's War Also Creates Real Risks For India
By shrugging aside Russia's aggression, India has shown indifference to fears that China could follow Russia's example.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi Visits Russia
Mikhail Metzel/TASS
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Anita Inder Singh*
-OpEd-
NEW DELHI — India is wrong to dismiss Russia's war in Ukraine as Europe's problem. The illegality and destructiveness of the invasion, and consequential food and energy crises, have global ramifications.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
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This explains why 143 out of the 193 member-states of the UN General Assembly voted against recognizing Russia's illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions after holding sham referenda there. Ninety-three voted in favor of expelling Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
India has abstained from every vote in the UN condemning Russia's aggression in Ukraine. The reason? Moscow is India's top arms supplier and some 70% of India's military platforms are of Russian origin.
This raises questions about India's strategic autonomy – but such queries are like water off a duck's back.
One world, one family?
Justifying India's refusal to censure Russia's unlawful assault on Ukraine at the GLOBSEC 2022 Bratislava Forum in Slovakia in June, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar contended that "Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems".
Who would have thought that the person wanting to create "One World, One Family, One Future" as president of the G20 over the next two years could brush off or be slow to recognize the global food and energy crises inflicted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
Russia, not Western sanctions, precipitated the crises by blockading the first of many Ukrainian ports on March 3. The head of the African Union, President Macky Sall of Senegal and President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, then heading the G20, met President Vladimir Putin last June to discuss the food, fertilizer and fuel crises caused by Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met him for the first time since Moscow launched its invasion only in September 2022 — at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting, sponsored by Russia's iron strategic partner, China.
East Asia spillover
By shrugging aside Russia's aggression as Europe's problem, India has also shown indifference to the fears — in and outside the Indo-Pacific — that China, the dominant partner in the Sino-Russian relationship, could follow Russia's example and try to restructure Asia's security architecture through war. China menaces the territorial sovereignty of many of its Asian neighbours, including India.
India's strategic partner in the Quad, Japan, faces Chinese threats to its sovereignty and fears that "Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow". Unsurprisingly, Japan has ended its 77-year-old pacifism. On Dec. 16, Japan announced its greatest military build-up since the end of the Second World War in 1945.
At the economic level, India has purchased unprecedented amounts of Russian crude at discount prices on the grounds that Europe's energy imports from Russia have dwarfed New Delhi's buys. New Delhi avows that its "moral duty" is to ensure the best deal for a country "with a per capita income of $2,000″. However, the common man has not benefited from India's rising oil imports from Russia. Instead, the private companies which have snapped up cheap Russian oil have made huge profits by selling it abroad — even to Europe.
Meanwhile, the foreign minister of a war-ravaged but unconquered Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, laments that it is "morally inappropriate" of India to argue that Europeans are also buying Russian energy. India is buying cheap Russian oil because of "our suffering".
"Crisis Strike'' rally against climate crisis in Warsaw
Aleksander Kalka/ZUMA
Double standards
New Delhi keeps silent about authoritarian Russia's silence on China's expansionism in India and Southeast Asia. In contrast, it has sharply criticized democratic Europe for being silent on China's activities in Asia: "When the rules-based order was under challenge in Asia, the advice we got from Europe was to do more trade."
Admittedly, the EU was strengthening its trading ties with China as Beijing displayed its expansionist intentions in the South and East China Seas after 2010. But so was India, whose trade with China has burgeoned to record heights despite border clashes in June 2020 — and again in December 2022.
True, the EU has no defense policy and cannot save "Asia" from China's belligerence just because France and Germany send a few warships to the Indo-Pacific. But India cannot "defend Asia" from Chinese imperialism any more than the EU. Its GDP per capita of 2,256.6 and military spending of $76 billion are no match for China's 12,556.3 and $293 billion respectively. So India focuses on securing its borders with China and Pakistan, and on countering China's fierce economic and military competition in its immediate South Asian neighborhood.
Responding to Russia's threat to wage nuclear war, India has wrongly sermonized that "nuclear weapons should not be used by any side in the Ukraine war". And yet, Ukraine is not a nuclear state. In 1994 it chose to denuclearize because the US, Britain and Russia, in the Budapest Memorandum, promised to guarantee its security. By invading Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, Russia violated that commitment, imperiling European and global security.
India could learn something from the EU's experience. Russia does not menace the sovereignty of any EU country at the moment. But by relying on a territorial spoiler for energy, even after Russia's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, democratic Europe has gone adrift in its strategic thinking.
As India confronts China's land grabs, its dependence on Beijing for trade could be self-defeating, given China's contempt for its slow progress.
Risks of Chinese imperialism
Meanwhile, what does New Delhi think of Putin's assertion that it is "natural" that China's "military might grows along with the rise in the economic potential", and that China's growing might "first of all… relates to its economic might… why should we follow third countries' interests in building our policy?" Such is Russia's applause for China's imperialism.
At another level — amazingly — after supplying India with weapons for over five decades, Moscow has reportedly asked New Delhi for parts of cars, aircraft and trains. So where will that leave India's dependence on Russian arms against China? At least EU countries are not in the incongruous and shaky position of being reliant on two enemies – Russia and the US – one of which could lose militarily in Ukraine.
The tangled legal, political and economic repercussions of Russia's devastating war in Ukraine extend far beyond Europe. Unlike India, most members of the G20 — hailing from the Americas, across Europe to Asia — have voted against Russia's transgressions of international law and human rights in Ukraine.
India will be able to provide constructive leadership to the G20 only if it recognizes their shock and despair at Russia's blatant contraventions of international norms. Even as democratic Europe confronts the strategic fallout and human distress caused by Russia's warmongering, it should step up its economic contribution to the well-being of Asia — and the rest of the developing world.
*Anita Inder Singh a Founding Professor of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution in New Delhi.
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