Facebook posts shared hundreds of times claim US President Donald Trump approved a $2.5 million fund for Madagascar to mass-produce a herbal remedy touted by the island’s president as a cure for COVID-19.
“COVID-19 UPDATE: America President Donald Trump has approved $2.5million for Mass Production of Madagascar herb Medicine for COVID-19,” the posts read., “In spite of the fact that the World Health Organisation (WHO) discrimination against Madagascar herb-drug for CORONAVIRUS, Donald Trump has expressly approved a whole sum of $2.5 Million for the mass production of the vaccine (sic).”, "AFP Fact Check ran a\xa0search for\xa0keywords “ Trump” and “Madagascar” on the Zambian Observers website and found an article from\xa0April 26\xa0with the headline: “Trump offers $2.5 million to Madagascar to develop the Covid-19 remedy.”", According to social media monitoring site CrowdTangle, this article has attracted more than 13,000 interactions on Facebook., On April 20, US ambassador to Madagascar, Michael Pelletier announced here that the US had donated $2.5 million to the island country in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. In a\xa0statement on the US embassy website, Pelletier said the funds were for “health assistance to address the COVID-19 outbreak” but did not give further details., The United States --\xa0through the US State Department and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) agency -- has offered financial assistance to countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean to help\xa0fight the pandemic., AFP Fact Check contacted the US Embassy in Madagascar and was directed to a US State Department Fact Sheet which gives a breakdown of how COVID-19 assistance donations\xa0are to be spent., According to the document, the US State Department\xa0donated\xa0$2.5 million to Madagascar, with the money going towards various projects such as training healthcare workers, funding awareness campaigns and\xa0deploying mobile laboratories for decentralised diagnosis. There is no mention of the funds being used to produce a\xa0herbal medicine., Madagascan President Andry Rajoelina last month\xa0unveiled\xa0Covid-Organics, a herbal concoction he claims can prevent and cure COVID-19. The drink, which was developed by the Malagasy Institute of Applied Research (IMRA), is derived from artemisia -- a plant with proven efficacy in malaria treatment -- and other indigenous herbs., However, health authorities such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention warned the herbal drink should be\xa0rigorously tested., While US President Donald Trump has promoted hydroxychloroquine -- a malaria\xa0drug that the World Health Organisation recently pulled from trials for possible COVID-19 treatments -- AFP Fact Check found no evidence of him commenting on Madagascar’s herbal concoction., AFP Fact Check has previously debunked false articles in the Zambian Observer here, here and here., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
The money was to help Madagascar fight the outbreak, not to produce a cure | AFP Fact Check