Ayna Garayeva, a teacher in the capital of authoritarian and secretive Turkmenistan, began taking extra sanitary measures in her classroom when the government issued new COVID-19 guidelines in August.
As well as standard COVID-19 precautions like temperature checks for students, she started fumigating her classroom with the smoke of a herb beloved by the ex-Soviet country’s leader.
“We are following the instructions as they are laid out,” 42-year-old Garayeva said.
Photo: AFP
In tightly controlled Turkmenistan, which still insists that it has no COVID-19 cases, the pandemic has led to a boom in a herb whose Turkmen name translates as “medicine for a hundred illnesses.”
Wild rue — known locally as yuzerlik — has for millennia been popular in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia as a panacea for sickness and ill fortune.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, a strongman leader and former dentist, has gone a step further. In March, he ordered wild rue burning on a “systematic level,” trumpeting its bacteria and infection-killing qualities.
At the same time, authorities continued to hold mass events and deter citizens from wearing masks.
Since the diktat, the cost of a wild rue bundle has grown fivefold to 5 manats (US$1.43).
In neighboring Uzbekistan, Bakhrom Almatov, Chief Doctor of the Republican Center of State Sanitary-Epidemiology Surveillance, said that the herb has “no direct effect” on viruses, despite having healthy properties.
“After use, many people start sneezing. When they sneeze, the body expels dust that has fallen into it,” Almatov told local media.
The WHO declined to comment on wild rue specifically, but said that traditional medicine in many countries “is often an important health resource with many applications.”
Berdimuhamedov joins the leader of Madagascar, who gained notoriety for promoting a scientifically unproven herbal virus remedy at home and abroad. Herbal remedies have been widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic in countries with struggling public health systems, like Yemen and Sierra Leone.
Yet Berdimuhamedov’s approach to the pandemic changed after the WHO visited in July. The delegation stopped short of dismissing his boast that the country had zero cases, a claim now only shared by North Korea and a handful of island states.
The WHO recommended that Turkmenistan adopt measures as if COVID-19 “were already circulating.”
WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge tweeted weeks later that the group had “expressed serious concern about [a rise] in #COVID19 negative pneumonia” during a teleconference with Berdimuhamedov.
Kluge said that the Turkmen government agreed to allow the WHO to sample COVID-19 tests and send them to WHO laboratories.
Since the July visit, non-food shops and restaurants across Turkmenistan have been shuttered and mask-wearing regime was put in place to counter “dust” and unspecified “pathogens.”
However, Turkmenistan has yet to cooperate with the WHO’s request for confirmatory testing.
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS