JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

My friend’s brother was diagnosed with dengue fever last week. Dengue fever is carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito which breeds in pools of stagnant water. There’s no cure for dengue, you can only treat the symptoms (recurring fever, rash).

The patient was given tea brewed from the leaves of the tawa-tawa (Euphorbia hierta) plant. It’s a hemostatic: it stops the hemorrhaging that comes with the disease. He took tawa-tawa tea regularly, and now he’s all right.

Tawa-tawa (alternate spelling taua-taua) grows everywhere in the Philippines and is also known as mata-mata, buto-butones, gatas-gatas, soro-soro, magatas, and cat’s hair. In an Inquirer interview former Health Secretary Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan recommends this traditional tea recipe:

“Wash to clean taua-taua, include roots, in running water. Briefly soak, wash grass again in water with one teaspoon each vinegar, baking soda and salt to thoroughly clean it. Rinse. Chop three taua-taua, add 500-ml water and place for 15 minutes over very low flame. Do not cover. Low heat aids in the extraction of the active ingredients, boiling doesn’t extract as much. Strain. Drink three times a day.”

If like me you are an idiot at identifying flora and might end up ingesting some poisonous weed, tawa-tawa tea bags are commercially available. I hope the supermarket hasn’t run out of them. Best to keep around the house.