Desperate Times Need Desperate Measures, So Comes Kegalle Peniya

By M.M. Janapriya –DECEMBER 19, 2020

Dr. M.M. Janapriya

On face value this Kegalle Peni Kolama appears benignly similar to the historical ‘Wadakaha Sudiya’. There was a total solar eclipse in the 1950s. This must have been the one of 1955 and I was just about 7 years old then but I do remember not least the eclipse we watched in a basin of water but also the famous stories of women drinking a decoction made of ‘Wadakaha’to become pretty. It was around this eclipse that the newspapers decided cheekily to lead young women folk up the garden path. Some of the Sinhala morning broadsheets decided to play this mischievous game. They reiterated anyone who drank ‘Wadakaha Sudiya’ during a period inside the ‘Sooriyagrahanaya’ became fair complexioned and pretty and the rest is history. Listen to this baila by one and only C.D. Fonseka which sums it up all. This potion remedy caught up in epidemic proportions and as expected by people with common sense didn’t result in the mass production of beauty queens but a large number of the gullible participants who drank the decoction ended up in hospital. If I remember right a few paid the ultimate price too. Remember `Wadakaha’ is poisonous. 

Discovery

Someone who is neither an Ayrvedic practitioner nor a proper traditional medical practitioner with registration to practice, wakes up one morning having been spoken to by Kali Amma about a “Wattoruwa’ for a Covid-19 cure. He then goes on to make this potion with Nutmeg, bees’ honey and two other secret ingredients and claims this to be a magic cure for Covid 19. I am at a loss to know how this Goda Weda Mahattaya established close enough contact with one of the Physicians of District Hospital, Wathupitiwala to trial his new found medicine so swiftly and also how he received and is still receiving an unimaginable degree of electronic media patronage. 

Aftermath of discovery 

Details of how the medicine was tested has not been made public but a printed list of patients and their PCR tests that had apparently  become negative at the end of 10 days was shown repeatedly on a certain TV channel that would sing songs of praise of the Administration no matter what. It is my considered view that no praiseworthy test on the efficacy of this deluded chap’s peniya could ever have been done by anyone the way it had been done, in the whole world let alone by a puisne Consultant Physician, BH Wathupitiwala and for sure the whole story is either a fabrication or indeed a miserably flawed test protocol and hence also the testing process. Professional association with unqualified people comes under infamous conduct in the Sri Lanka Medical Ordinance which is punishable by erasure of registration and I hope the SLMC takes a good look at the saga and the involvement of the Wathupitiwala medical personnel in the matter. 

Media Patronage 

TV channels both the state run and private were relentless in their effort to maintain the ‘peni news’ as the most important news of the day. This is exactly how the skin colour challenged young women were brain washed over 65 years ago to drink Wadakaha Sudiya about the composition of which, they didn’t have a clue but yet were unhesitant to drink it. The mass hysteria of the sector of the public possessed by the Kegalle Peniya, in similar fashion, thronged the premises of the discoverer paying scant regard to social distancing. Sri Lankan TV channels went overboard with the efficacy of this decoction. We watched with dismay and despair how some channels were at work morning noon and night in pursuit of this goal. The question is was this done at the instant of this TV channel itself or were they ‘Baron’s orderlies’?

Political Patronage 

Potion was taken in public by the Health Minister in the presence of some health officials and this was splashed widely over all TV channels. Then the peniya found its way big time in to the parliament premises together with its discoverer Mr. Dadi Bidi the first stop being the speaker’s chambers. How some MPP drank this syrup was shown on all local TV channels too. Quite a few MPP came on TV and spoke in support of the peniya. One fellow popularly known in social media as Sookarawansha went to the extent of being derogatory on and ridiculing the western system which advocated stringent testing before the peniya could be rolled out to the greater public. 

It is interesting how this syrup attracted the attention of the powers that be who appointed a high level team comprised of university professors to determine its efficacy in curing Covid. The 6 professor investigative team is at work on the matter right now and it would take a few weeks for the report to come out if it is ever going to. The prime Minister has asked the test to be expedited as if it is like laying down a rail track or something similar. I would invite him to read the next paragraph. 

Science behind Testing 

I cannot see how the expert panel can establish whether or not this decoction is working without doing a randomised control trial. Randomised means the patients are picked up in random fashion for the two arms namely the test arm and the control arm. Though selected randomly the two arms should be comparable in age, sex, ethnic ratio, nutritional status, co-morbid status to name a few factors that could confound the result if not given due consideration. There is a thing called the power factor in statistics which calculates the number of cases needed to be tested to get a statistically significant result. Shall we say arbitrarily this number is 250 patients in each arm which means 500 patients have to be found conforming to the above criteria? They also need to be at the same stage of the infection like say the first day of the illness and all of them should be symptomatic. Both these groups have to give informed consent to be tested as none of the patients would receive anything more than the peniya or the placebo. Question then arises as to how many patients would prefer not to be treated by conventional means but to be treated as above. This will prove to be a difficult obstruction to get through. From the foregoing you would agree that testing the peniya scientifically is a nonstarter. Giving the benefit of our doubts to the investigators we shall wait patiently for the results to be released.

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