Although she says Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and the rest of the Caribbean have a variety of medicinal plants that could support the body in the treatment of COVID-19, integrative medicine specialist Dr Asante Le Blanc adds that vaccines remain the best protection.
“…It is important to understand that no herb will cure COVID-19 but it will alleviate the symptoms,” says Le Blanc.
Integrative medicine is defined as the use of allopathy and herbal medicines to treat patients.
From a Chinese medicine perspective, Dr Le Blanc said, certain herbs can be used at certain phases of the COVID-19 disease to support the body better and most importantly in the convalescence of the illness.
In a recent interview in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Dr Le Blanc told Stabroek Weekend that she received calls from several patients, including in Guyana, about the use of herbs to treat COVID-19.
“Based on evidence, I would definitely recommend fever grass and ginger to alleviate the symptoms, and in extreme circumstances, the dried bois canot (congo pump) leaf,” she said.
Should anyone experience symptoms, she advised testing, confirming one’s status,before treatment under a certified herbalist.
As a scientist and herbalist, she said, she took the COVID-19 vaccine and had some of the coronavirus symptoms after the first shot. She took the herbal formula that she has and got through it. “I constantly proof the herbs to make sure they support the body as they should and to be able to tell you what to expect,” she said.
Dr Le Blanc’s interest in herbalism began in Cuba, where she studied medicine.
“Because of the economic embargo with the United States, Cuba introduced a lot of natural medicine into their curriculum to show how we could bring allopathic medicine and herbal medicine together. So that piqued my interest,” she noted.
Le Blanc, the daughter of Dr Richard and Roxanne Van West Charles and also the first grandchild of the late president Forbes Burnham, was born in Cuba but grew up in Guyana. Her early education was at St Margaret’s Primary and President’s College.
Of President’s College, she said, “The school prepared us in a way like no other. It gave us a sense of self-respect, discipline and an amazing sense of humility and self-worth. The things that we studied, the way we lived, the camaraderie that we had as schoolmates, when we speak to one another on social media, phone and when we meet up, would recognise the strong sisterhood and brotherhood bond that we share. As I mature, I look back at these experiences and I am now so grateful that they set the foundation for me in Cuba and life in general.”
She returned to Cuba as a Guyanese scholarship awardee to study medicine.
Speaking briefly of her Cuban experience, she said, “I lived as a foreigner in their medical school but because I was born in Cuba, I lived in Cuba as a Cuban because of their laws. I was on their ‘libreta’ or ration system so my household that I was living in got ration for me. I was blessed enough to live as a Cuban but as a foreigner at the same time.”
Looking back at the training, she said, “I recognise the wonderful opportunity and experience I was given by studying general medicine in Cuba at that time. It was one that brought me more resilience.”
Her fluency in Spanish from living in Cuba, she said, has helped her greatly in communicating with the Venezuelan and Cuban communities in Trinidad. She returned to Guyana from Cuba but subsequently went to Trinidad and Tobago (TT) with her Antiguan husband.
There was a delay in being registered in the medical profession in TT, and she said, “As serendipity would have it, I started studying medical herbalism with a school in California. It is important to honour our ancient traditions when it comes to herbal medicine and see how we can incorporate it and not to totally disregard and disrespect it as a path to true optimum health and well-being. That’s what I do. I try to find a way to help people by using both branches of medicine.”
It has done much more for her patients. She said, “There is a huge distrust in allopathic medicine and in drugs as we are seeing right now with the COVID-19 vaccine situation. When you bring the two together you see much more acceptance of both worlds. All our medicines came from plants originally. That is how penicillin and epinephrine and other medicines were discovered.”
Integrative medicine in TT and the Caribbean, she said, “is not very common. It is picking up slowly. There is always that either, or situation. People often tell me they don’t know doctors who do both sides. I am one of the very few who has been doing it in Trinidad and one of the more well known.”
Integrative medicine is science-based and evidence-based, she said, adding, “You are looking at the safety of patients so you don’t want patients to say no to medicine and go straight to herbs and do the wrong thing. You want to see how best you can get a patient to really feel well using both branches.”
Education on COVID-19
With the onset of COVID-19 in TT, Dr Le Blanc said, “As a physician each one of us had to make a decision as to how we could help our colleagues in the public sector during this pandemic. A lot of us volunteer our time as best as we could to help. To me it is something I am supposed to do. When the vaccination drive came about we again volunteered to assist in vaccinating, observing and making recommendations as to how we could overcome the pandemic in the country.”
Apart from observing the COVID-19 protocols, she said, the vaccine is an added protective shield and there is no need to politicize the vaccination issue to add to conspiracy theories.
“It is important for us in the Caribbean region to understand that our medical resources are not what it is in the first world so we have to come together and do the best we can to limit hospitalisation and complications of the COVID-19 infection.”
Noting that COVID-19 is killing millions of people worldwide, she said adults taking the vaccine can save the lives of children and those who cannot get vaccinated. The vaccines may have some side effects but when you look at the risk of death by COVID-19 infections versus the risk of death by a vaccine, it is a very clear cut decision.
“We have too much at stake in terms of jobs, livelihoods and economies in general. This virus is not just hitting you and you recuperate, it has long lasting effects on people. People cannot open their doors anymore because of the loss of months of income.”
Encouraging people to take the vaccine, she said, “I beg governments not to say you have to do this and you have to do that. I want governments to keep on educating and educating and not keep sending mixed signals. Let the science work for us.”
All who have been vaccinated and made educated decisions to be vaccinated, she said, need to also encourage their brothers and sisters.
“In the last pandemic, people just died. There was no vaccine. Now we are trying to save lives and it is a race against time. People are confused and frustrated. It is playing on people’s minds. When we are vaccinating,some people would say they are vaccinating because they don’t know what to do anymore. Sometimes we have to accept and trust the science and take that leap of faith.
“When you see 13 deaths or 20 something deaths a day in the Caribbean, we cannot afford to lose these numbers of people in a day. That’s what is happening in Trinidad.”
The geopolitics of the vaccine needs to be thrown out and the World Health Organization needs to put a stop to it, she said.
Regional leaders need to send one clear message which cannot be dictatorial, she said. “It has to be one of compassion, empathetic and strategic and we just have to try and try again till we convince our populations. Empower them to make their decisions with education so they make informed decisions,” she emphasised.
Private practice, charity
Victoria Clinic in Woodbrook, Port of Spain is Dr Le Blanc’s practice, which she says is, “The holistic home for health care in Trinidad and Tobago. We do general medicine, traditional Chinese medicine consultations, acupuncture and bone density testing.”
Also a clinical densitometrist, she said, she was given a bone densitometrist machine and it gave her the opportunity to sign on to do a course in bone density. “It allows me to diagnose and manage osteoporosis.”
She got into the study of acupuncture following former first lady Viola Burnham’s death by cancer. “Mom Vi was very dear to me,” she recalled. “She was very much in love with acupuncture. When she died I wanted to do more for women and cancer. She was a woman who always wanted women to be empowered and to be self-reliant. When she died of cancer I started some courses in acupuncture.”
That was when serendipity hit her once again. Dr George Laquis, former chairman of TT Cancer Society invited her to join the society’s board. Now the society’s chairperson for four years, she said, “We try to promote healthier lifestyles through education and by being advocates for all cancer patients.”
If as a society, people are more proactive when it comes to their health with healthier lifestyles and supporting one another, she said, “then we won’t have as much of these non-communicable diseases because hypertension, diabetes, obesity, cancer and asthma are themselves a pandemic in our entire Caribbean region. We have to make changes as a region and as a human race.”
The cancer society is her major charity. Her family has begun to do some charity work as well but they do it quietly. “We don’t think there needs to be any hullabaloo.”
Le Blanc is the mother of five children, two of whom she birthed and three who are her husband’s sons. “I raised them all,” she said. One of her daughters was born in Grenada and the other in Trinidad. Her sons were born between Antigua and Guyana.
Le Blanc has Trinidadian roots as her maternal grandmother, Sheila Lataste, first wife of Forbes Burnham was Trinidadian. “She was a great woman. She was there in my life. I would have preferred for my grandparents to see me now to give back to them. Each one contributed to my life somehow.”
Given her Caribbean-flavoured family, when asked what her favourite food was, she said, “I don’t know. I love Antiguan. I love Cuban. I love Trinidadian but most of all I love my Guyanese food and a good pepperpot.”
Wayne Kublalsingh
When social activist and University of the West Indies lecturer Dr Wayne Kublalsingh undertook two hunger strikes in 2015 to protest the construction of the highway from Debe to Mon Desir to link San Fernando with Point Fortin in Trinidad because of the threat to the environment, LeBlanc was his physician.
“It was a strange journey,” she recalled. “While I admired his stance for what he believed and found it superhuman, it was scary because at the end of the day, I am a doctor and I can’t stand by and watch someone die. The first strike I really was there. I did all I could and I didn’t give him any medication or anything to ingest.
“During the second hunger strike, I stepped down because I found that it was really going against what I believed in as a doctor. That was his fight. It was hard for me as a physician to not do anything and to watch his body deteriorate. He and I did not part ways. We came to a very nice understanding where I admired his fight but it was against what I stand for as a physician.”
