A team of researchers at Asante Mampong, a farming community in Ghana, have found that cold bark extract of Kookonesuo (spathodia campanulata) could heal buruli ulcer.
The cold bark extract, they said, applied dermatologically or on the skin, heals buruli ulcer in the post-nodular phase, but does not regenerate lost tissues.
In the research, which was a pre-test carried on four people medically diagnosed as buruli ulcer patients over a one-year period, the team also found that the plant had anti-bacterial
property. The stability was, however,suspected.
Jacob Amoah, district pharmacist of the Mampong District Hospital and head of the research team that also included two medical doctors, announced this in an interview with the Xinhua News Agency at Mampong on Sunday.
The team generated a cold bark extract after subjecting the bark to cold compression by using a plant oil extractor.
According to Amoah, gauze was then soaked in a freshly prepared aqueous extract of Kookonesuo and applied to the identified patients' wounds daily.
The research guaranteed the plant's efficacy nationwide but could not guarantee its efficacy beyond Ghana, as no research had been done to assess that.
Amoah called for the establishment of extractors in endemic communities to facilitate daily extraction and application to address post-nodular buruli ulcer.
They called for a further research to be conducted to see if orally administered Kookonesuo, which has traditionally been used over 40 years with no adverse effects, could prevent the development of nodules and ulcers
from the pre-nodular phase in those who had the mycobacterium in them but do not show any clinical signs.
Amoah wanted the instability associated with the antibacterial active principle in the plant resolved so that Ghana could supply endemic countries with its Kookonesuo products as a
contribution towards global eradication of buruli
ulcer.
"This will need a strong political will," Amoah said, urging buruli ulcer patients to harness directly the potential of Kookonesuo which abounds in Ghana to heal their ulcers.