Cow dung cocktails: why India can’t get enough of quack Covid-19 ‘cures’

As a tidal wave of infections overwhelms the country’s hospitals, a growing number of Indians are turning to outlandish treatments with no scientific basis

Support for herbal ‘immunity boosters’ and other spurious treatments isn’t confined to the uneducated – it extends to the highest levels of government

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A man bathes in milk to remove cow dung from his body as part of ‘therapy’ some believe boosts immunity at a cow shelter on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India, earlier this month. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:00pm, 21 May 2021Updated: 9:00pm, 21 May 2021

Doctors in India are baffled. Despite being told incessantly for more than a year that only masks, social distancing, and handwashing can protect them against coronavirus, some Indians still prefer to take fake “immunity boosters” and other herbal Covid-19 “cures”, or drink concoctions made from cow dung and urine.

At the cow shelter he runs in Geeta Colony in east New Delhi, Radha Kant Vats says people desperate to boost their immunity come to him for a special cocktail called panchakavyam, made of cow urine, dung, milk, curd and ghee (clarified butter).

“I tell them to have it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. With this inside them, they won’t get the virus. It’s worked for me,” Vats said.

Asked how the concoction was supposed to prevent infection, Vats said simply that the cow was a “mother”, claiming that as such, its waste products had disinfecting and medicinal properties that “the world has yet to discover”.

An MP of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Pragya Thakur, said on Monday that she drinks a glass of cow urine every day, which she claimed had protected her against the virus.

Visitors to a cow shelter in Ahmedabad apply cow dung to their bodies in the belief that it will boost their immunity to defend against Covid-19. Photo: Reuters