200 join lagundi medical trials

DESPITE the scepticism of Western-oriented physicians, Filipinos have been using different parts of the Vitex negundo plant (pic), known as lagundi in Tagalog and dangla in Ilocano, to treat various ailments long before Jesuit missionaries wrote about it in 17th-century chronicles.

Many of the claims of folk apothecaries have been validated by several studies, dating back to the 1980s, both in the Philippines and India, where the plant is known as nirgundi.