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Remedios Yujra, 42, deeply breathes in the mist of a cooking herbs formerly used by the Aymara to purify their lungs as they pass through a mist chamber installed in the Bolivian Andean city of El Alto.
Like Remedios, thousands of Bolivians rely on the beneficial properties of eucalyptus, wira wira, and chamomile, antibacterial plants, expectorant, febrifuge, and sweat which, according to traditional doctors, help to create an immune blanket against the coronavirus.
It feels “very nice, pure steam with medicinal plants, how cute!” Exclaimed Remedios after leaving the first of the ten plastic craft chambers that will be installed in the Alto Lima neighborhood of the city of El Alto, 3,800 meters above sea level and neighbor of La Paz, inhabited mostly by Aymara migrants.
The association of traditional Inca Roca Doctors, who installed the cabin, replaced the usual sodium hypochlorite nebulizer with a boiled eucalyptus, wira wira (huira huira) and manzanilla, plants that the Bolivian indigenous people use when they have colds. The national pharmacy also has these plants in their dosage, for example in antitussives.
With this initiative “we are preventing coronavirus, because a cold, a cough can start (to spread) the pandemic”Says the traditional doctor Judith Condori Apaza, who points out that this is in no way a cure against the evil that is unrestrainedly attacking the planet.
“Inhale and exhale forcefully, so we are going to help (the steam) enter the lungs and free the airways”, One of Condori’s colleagues indicates to a neighbor from El Alto inside the chamber.
“We are aware that this virus is first lodged in the airways and has a small capsule that we can remove, which weakens with these medicinal plants,” explains the doctor to the man who has just been treated with plant vapors.
The procedure “more than anything is preventive”, says Felipe Néstor Quilla, vice minister of Natural Medicine.
“At this time We do not have to offer a cure, but what we are doing is helping methods through medicinal plants to mainly prevent“He clarifies when asked if he thinks that these plants will help stop the pandemic.