Nairobi — Even before you are introduced to him, the herbal smell of the powder ferried in his car announces who he his.

The strong smell forces you to sneeze but he is only tickled.

Meet Prof Jondiko Ogoche. He has remodelled an anti-malarial plant that he hopes can compete effectively with drugs from multinational pharmaceutical companies.

Prof Jondiko Ogoche

The 57-year-old Maseno University organic chemistry lecturer cultivates Artemisia annua - a plant with strong plasmodial clearance power - and teaches postgraduate students how to do research on local plants with traditional medicinal therapy.

Jondiko, Dholuo for a writer(s), pays a lot of tribute to the late Prof Thomas Odhiambo. The two met when Jondiko had made a scientific breakthrough in a research on pyrethrum insecticides at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe).

When Odhiambo learnt that Jondiko was the graduate researcher who had developed a chromatographic method for separation of six pyrethrin compounds from pyrethrum extracts, he offered him a PhD scholarship at Nottingham University to study organic chemistry. During his PhD studies he developed a new method of making synthetic pyrethrins.

Jondiko now grows at Maseno University the medicinal plant the Chinese are believed to have used 2000 years ago to treat malaria. The university has provided land to the scholar to grow and process the drug to fight the mosquito plasmodia and discount the World Health Organisation's belief that it might develop resistance in the near future.

"It is true that there is no evidence from literature that the plasmodium has developed resistance against the use of herbal preparations from this plant," he says.

The crude extracts from the plant grown in East Africa are taken to Europe for the manufacture of combination therapeutic drugs such as coartem, which are shipped back to Africa. This makes the drugs too expensive for the poor communities living in the malaria-infested areas.

Jondiko, in collaboration with the Kenya Prisons department, will exhibit the herb at the forthcoming Kisumu Agricultural Show. The plant, commonly known as wormwood, is the source of the compounds used to manufacture cortexin and coatem, the drugs used in first line treatment of malaria.

Jondiko's approach is based on scientific breakthrough, as opposed to quack invention. "The clinical evidence obtained from researchers in the Democratic Republic of Congo indicates 99 per cent therapeutic success in the use of herbal preparations from this plant against malaria," he says.

He is against the use of the herb for preventive purposes and recommends that patients obtain diagnosis before use. His research acumen has earned him consultancies and research support from the Lake Victoria Environmental Management Programme, East African Botanical Company, the African Institute of Capacity Development and VICRES, the Great Lakes research body.

Jondiko started his primary education at Gendia Primary School before proceeding to Agoro Sare Secondary School , Homa Bay High School and the University of Nairobi.

He believes the high medical expenses incurred by poor communities in Africa can be avoided if pharmaceutical companies and East African Botanical Company produce the combination drugs for malaria in Africa. This would not only create jobs but also develop infrastructure for future establishment of a local pharmaceutical industry.

The organic chemistry professor, who had just ground the leaves of the poppy like plant when The Sunday Standard met him, believes that the theories advanced by the West - to have artemisinin and its derivatives used in combination drugs - might be scientifically sound but lack a social dimension.

He says the education and training programmes for cultivation and administration of the drug should be extended to the villages because it is also a cash crop apart from its therapeutic efficacy.

The plant, he says, matures in seven months. Ten grammes of the seed can cover an acre of land and fetch Sh100,000."Who can give you that even in two years?" he asks.

Jondiko packages his powdered herbs in doses for both children and adults. One must first be diagnosed and found to have malaria parasites before he can dispense the herbs.

Herbal preparation and administration instructions are well inscribed on the packages - with a warning that if symptoms persist, medical advice should be sought. "There is no scientific evidence that plasmodia has developed resistance to the dihydroartemisinin used in combination drugs," the scholar says.

Currently he is supervising postgraduate students whose course includes malarial management using herbal materials.