By Kefiloe Kajane
The National University of Lesotho’s (NUL) team of scientists led by Dr Lerato Seleteng-Kose has produced the first ever local cough syrup, known as OptiCough.
In an interview with theReporter, Dr Seleteng-Kose said the cough syrup relieves cough, fever and flu and it was released on September 2020 made with local herbs.
She indicated that producing this medicine was their way of promoting locally made scientifically checked medicines.
She further indicated that there are numerous medications in Lesotho that are claimed to be cures for many illnesses but, because there is no medical body that checks the authenticity and approves medications, they may be harmful to humans, hence the promotion of scientifically proven ones.
She emphasized that it is important that Lesotho have such bodies because people are desperate for cures and will consume just about anything. She said such a body is needed that will approve medicines, to prevent any harm to people from untested medicines.
“OptiCough is already available at local pharmacies. We had two products that we were making, the cough syrup and the Covid-19 drug. The envisaged Covid-19 drug was taken to CSIR in South Africa for testing of anti-microbial effectiveness against Covid-19, while the cough syrup was tested here at NUL and on September 3 2020, it was released for consumption.”
