Sea buckthorn can be a Covid cure: Experts

Shimla, June 25

Experts have urged the DRDO and other research organisations to timely complete the clinical trials of sea buckthorn drugs on human beings for their development to protect people from Covid-19 and other severe health problems and also help in rapid acclimatisation of Army men to the high-altitude areas.

The Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS) and the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), Delhi, have carried out a pre-clinical research on sea buckthorn and found it effective in protecting the troops against high-altitude-related health problems such as hypoxia, snow bites and UV radiation. Afforestation with sea buckthorn is the answer to the twin problems of combating the Covid-19 pandemic and meeting the challenge of security threat in the border areas in the Himalayas. These problems are likely to stay for a long time if appropriate measures are not taken, say the experts.

“Massive afforestation with sea buckthorn and its use to develop drugs to combat coronavirus as well as for the acclimatisation of the troops to border areas of Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh is the need of the hour,” says Dr Virendra Singh, general secretary of the Sea buckthorn Association of India.

The Union Government had sanctioned the Rs 1,000-crore project called National Mission on Sea buckthorn under the Climate Change Programme in 2012 but funds were not provided till date, he said.

CSK Himachal Pradesh Agricultural University, Palampur, has done a pioneering work on sea buckthorn and the Indian Institute of Technology, in collaboration with other research organisations and a private sector company, recently submitted a Rs 7.5-crore proposal to the Union Ministry of AYUSH for funding for the development of immunity booster and coronavirus drug from sea buckthorn, which grows naturally in the region. — TNS