We can simply term them as 'celebrity' 21st-century herbal doctors whom quite aware of the gullibility of much Kikuyu media audience, have found a goldmine in these media platforms which they have fully capitalized on to drive their 'healing messages' home.
Dr Peter Murugu of Murugu Clinics and his peer in the herbal medicine industry Dr Andrew Njuguna have for many years posed on various Kikuyu media outlets as the indisputable and untainted medical doctors capable of addressing almost every health issue that the conventional medicines have generally failed in.
From low libido/orgasm, infertility, gynaecological complications, malignant cancers, STIs to among many other complex health problems, Dr Murugu and Njuguna have apparently have had cures to all of them.
However, a raid on their respective clinics in Nairobi and Ruiru on Monday by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB), many current and prospective users of these commercial herbal drugs may have to think twice going forward.
According to PPB as quoted by Daily Nation, some of the herbal drugs impounded on the two popular clinics were found to lack manufacture/expiry dates and ingredients used to manufacture them.
"We are concerned that the drugs they are selling do not contain the dates of manufacture and expiration as well as the ingredients used in preparation," PPB officer Washington Oyoo is quoted by the Nation.
He adds: "It is important to note that the chemical compounds used to prepare medicines are poisons which can positively or negatively affect the human body."
Andrew Njuguna the owner of Kamirithu Herbs Clinic, is a diploma pharmacy graduate of the little-known Royal College in Ruiru with no further medical education but if you happen to bump on him on any of the popular Kikuyu media outlets, you might be forgiven to think that he is more qualified than the GoK's 'imported' Cuban doctors.
But how can you even doubt their qualifications and credibility if some of their concoctions retail at an exorbitant price of between Sh3,000 and Sh5,000 as the Nation reports?
Mind you, despite these high prices, the Kamirithu Herbs Clinic owner revealed to the PPB officers that most of his so-called herbal extracts branded as multipurpose-ailment-drugs are yet to undergo any scientific tests to ascertain their widely acclaimed effectiveness.
Njuguna who claims to have been in the herbal medicine field for the last 30 years, the Nation adds, told the PPB officers that the University of Nairobi dismissed him without giving him audience the last time he tried to take his herbal concoctions to be subjected to scientific tests.