Dear Editor,
I noticed over the past 2-3 weeks three of our local media houses being involved in a competition to tear down some very successful and effective products that have been on the local market over the recent past. Three of these products are Phosferine, Phosmovite Chanca Piedra and Fungabort. Who are the registered owners of these products or their tradenames? Has anybody taken the steps to find out?
Firstly, Phosferine is a discontinued product in Canada. However, any amount of Phosferine can be purchased on the website Amazon.com. Phosferine is made from a plant named Cinchona Officanalis. This plant is very native to Guyana. It can be found deep in the rainforest, so it is easy to make right here once the plant can be found. Some Amerindians know it. They call it Pink Cincola. Cinchona is good. It is the source of quinine and the original treatment for malaria or dengue fever. The locals give a few drops to their caged-birds. It opens up the appetite and kills parasites in the intestine and blood. Do not overdose. Many Guyanese are very ignorant of the powerful plants this country possesses. This is certainly not the case with one of them, and I know him personally.
In respect of Fungabort and Phosmovite Chanca Piedra, there is a re-migrant who has lived for over 25 years in the US and Canada who claims ownership to the name Fungabort and Phosmovite. He spent most of his teenage life in the Greek neighbourhood of Astoria, Queens, New York. He returned to Guyana in 1992 and left for Canada in 2001. He has spent many years working at a lab in Canada, and the only violation I can see for these products so far is failing to register with the Food and Drugs Department. Nothing is fake. They are his products. This is nothing strange. There are hundreds of products on the local market that have not been registered with the Food and Drugs. In business, you do not put the cart before the horse. You do not spend millions to set up factories and go through the branding process, only to discover that your products have failed. You test the market first, and if you have a viable product that is in demand, then you go through the formalization process. One must also take into consideration the fact that products nowadays have a very short lifespan. You develop the products and spend a lot of money, then overnight the copycats pop up., Fungabort and Phosmovite have passed the test with flying colours. I see on the boxes the manufacturer states ‘Formulated in Canada’. Is this a crime? Formulated in Canada does not necessarily mean that it was manufactured in Canada. The formulas can very well be put together or created in Canada, but actual manufacturing can be done anywhere. The newspapers keep lamenting that caustic soda was found in the products. Which one of the products have caustic soda? Please, do not destroy peoples’ livelihood and hard work. Nothing has caustic soda besides their soap, and most soaps are made with caustic. It goes through a process of saponification, so stop scaring people.
Was the Food and Drug Department able to find anything else in the Phosmovite Chanca Piedra besides Phyllanthus niruri? No! Were they able to find anything else in a bottle of Phosferine besides Cinchona Bark extract, water, Sodium Benzoate, Citric Acid and artificial colour? No! Where is the caustic? Fungabort is the brainchild of the said Guyanese referred to above. He claimed that he was in business between 1992 and 2000 in Guyana as a Japan spare parts trader. Most of the big names in the industry were his friends who used to come and lime by his business. They got ideas and they are all big boys today. He is determined to keep his new venture a tightly guarded secret as the copycats are there peeping, and he would go as far as setting up his business in another country and just have the herbs from Guyana exported to him. Fungabort was born in Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago. The person who claims to own the name Fungabort related that upon leaving Guyana in 2001 he was very uncomfortable working for companies in Canada. He got a job through the employment agency there, but would leave Canada regularly and vend in the Caribbean. From Belize to Barbados he would walk the streets with a bag on his shoulder selling health and beauty products. One day he met a woman by the name of Racquel Juggernauth in Plaza 2001, Trinidad and Tobago who threw her feet up on a chair in front of him. She showed him a big stinky fungus on her toenail and asked him to bring something for her infected toenail from Canada for her.
He said that when he returned to Canada he sat on the computer and researched what were the remedies for toenail fungus, and some people said that they had had success with Vicks. He realized that it was the camphor in Vicks that was doing the work, so he found a way of liquefying camphor with 90 percent isopropyl and came up with solution that he gave to Racquel. Two weeks later the fungus was gone and Fungabort was born, making way for a household name on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.
In Guyana people find joy in tearing each other down. They just want to see you suffer. Guyana is set to lose another intelligent mind… This time it will be for good. The owner of Phosmovite and Fungabort has virtually no ties left in the country of his birth…. Not even a piece of immovable asset in his name.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)