Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Ghanaians have traveled to a plant research center outside the capital, Accra, to give scientists and researchers herbal products and plants they think will help cure the coronavirus or at least alleviate symptoms.  About 70% of Ghanaians depend on herbal remedies for their health care.  Last year, government hospitals began integrating the practitioners and training them to incorporate scientific methods into their work. The Center for Plant Medicine Research grew out of a visit by a Ghanaian doctor to China in the 1960s to learn from Chinese herbal medicine.

The center’s acting executive director, Kofi Bobi Barimah, dreams of finding a cure for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus that came from China. And he’s not the only one. Some people come to the center located in a lush, mountainous area in Ghana’s Eastern Region claiming they have a cure for the virus revealed to them in a dream. “What we have told them is that it is good that it has been revealed to you," said Barimah. "But at the Center for Plant Medicine Research, what we do is that we do research to look at the safety of it and then also to make sure it is something that can be consumed by the public. And we also make sure that it is something that is plant-based.”