Herbal Eye Remedies in Ghana: What’s Safe and What Isn’t

Search “eye remedy tea” in Ghana and you’ll find plenty. Herbal teas on Jumia. Eyebright capsules on import sites. And at least one widely circulated advertorial promising that a herbal tea cures glaucoma and cataracts within weeks, with testimonials from people who “dumped their glasses.”

What you won’t find is a single ophthalmologist explaining what any of it actually does.

That’s a strange gap, because this is a question we’re asked constantly. Patients, especially those from susceptible professions, arrive at our clinics in Mataheko, Osu, Tema and Kumasi holding a bottle someone gave them, or having already used it for weeks, and they want to know whether they’ve helped themselves or hurt themselves.

The honest answer is: it depends entirely on what you did with it. And the difference between the two is bigger than most people realise.

First, a Distinction Almost Nobody Makes

There are two completely different things people mean by “herbal eye remedy,” and lumping them together is how patients get hurt.

The first is drinking something. A tea, a decoction, a capsule. It goes into your stomach.

The second is putting something into your eye. Plant sap, crushed leaf extract, a liquid prepared by a healer, breast milk, or any other substance instilled directly onto the eye surface.

These carry wildly different levels of risk, and the medical literature is clear about which one causes the damage.

Clinically, we call the second category Traditional Eye Medicine, or TEM. It refers to substances or practices used outside conventional ophthalmic care, including plant extracts, animal products, oils, breast milk, and locally prepared mixtures applied directly to the eye.

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, reported use ranges from as low as 5.9% of patients to as high as 82.3%, driven by cultural belief, limited access to formal eye care, and reliance on traditional healers.

That’s not a fringe practice. In many communities, it’s the first thing tried.

The Teas: Probably Not Harming your Eye, But Not Helping it Either

Let’s deal with the drinkable products first, because they’re what most people searching online have in mind.

Eyebright, bilberry, ginkgo, green tea — these are the usual ingredients. Marketing claims typically say they improve night vision, reduce eye strain, lower eye pressure, or reverse cataracts.

Here is where I have to be direct with you.

There is no herbal tea that reverses a cataract. A cataract is the clouding of the natural lens inside your eye. It is a structural change to a physical tissue. Nothing you drink dissolves it. The only treatment that has ever worked is surgery to remove the clouded lens and replace it — a procedure we perform routinely, and one St. Thomas introduced to Ghana in 2011.

There is no herbal tea that cures glaucoma. Glaucoma damages the optic nerve, and that damage is permanent. Treatment works by lowering the pressure inside the eye to stop further loss. Drops, laser and surgery do that in measurable, verifiable ways. No tea has ever been shown to.

Does that make these products dangerous? Usually not directly. Drinking bilberry tea is unlikely to injure your eye. Green tea contains genuine antioxidants and is a perfectly reasonable thing to drink.

The danger is different, and it’s the point of this entire article.

The Real Harm is Almost Never the Remedy. It’s the Delay.

This is the finding I wish every patient in Ghana knew.

A study of corneal disease patients across two district hospitals in rural Malawi tracked how long people waited before seeking hospital care. 

Patients who had used traditional eye medicine took an average of 51 days between the start of their symptoms and presenting at hospital. Patients who hadn’t used it took 13 days.

Fifty-one days versus thirteen.

And the outcome followed exactly what you’d expect. Sixteen per cent of the traditional-medicine group arrived with vision worse than 3/60 in the affected eye, compared with five per cent of those who hadn’t used it. 

Three times the rate of severe vision loss.

The remedy didn’t necessarily blind them. The five-and-a-half weeks it bought while an infection ate through the cornea did.

Corneal ulcers move fast. A bacterial ulcer can perforate the eye in days. Fungal keratitis — which is common in agricultural settings across Ghana, often after a scratch from plant matter — is slower but far harder to treat once established. 

In both cases, the treatment window is measured in days, not months.

When it’s Applied Directly to the Eye, it Gets Worse

For substances instilled into the eye, the evidence moves from “delay causes harm” to “the substance itself causes harm.”

Across Africa, traditional eye medicines are estimated to be responsible for 8 to 10% of corneal blindness. Corneal opacification — scarring that clouds the clear front window of the eye — is the most common cause of blindness in one eye across the continent.

The specific findings are consistent across countries and decades:

• In Tanzania, a one-year study of 103 corneal ulcer patients found 25% of ulcers were associated with traditional eye medicine use in the preceding week. Users were significantly more likely to present with hypopyon — pus collecting inside the front of the eye — at 19.3% compared with 2.6% among non-users.
• In Nigeria, 30% of endophthalmitis cases — infection inside the eyeball itself, one of the most sight-threatening emergencies in ophthalmology — were attributed to traditional eye medicine use.
• In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a study of patients who had consulted traditional healers found a cause-and-effect relationship between traditional eye medicine and the development or worsening of corneal ulcers, with perforation and destruction of the eye in most cases.

Two mechanisms are at work. Some preparations are directly toxic or caustic to the corneal surface. Others aren’t toxic but are simply non-sterile — and secondary infection is itself an important cause of corneal scarring following traditional eye medicine use. 

A clean plant extract prepared in an unclean container introduces bacteria to an eye whose defences are already compromised.

So What’s Actually Safe?

Not everything traditional is harmful, and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise.

Practices such as face washing with clean water are harmless. What causes damage is ocular instillation — herbal extracts, breast milk, ground berries, and animal excreta placed into the eye.

Here’s how I’d group it in practice:

Reasonable. Drinking herbal teas as part of your normal diet. Washing your face and eyelids with clean water. Cool compresses on tired or swollen lids. A diet genuinely rich in leafy greens, orange vegetables and fish — which supports eye health through nutrition that is well documented.

Pointless but usually harmless. Teas and supplements marketed as curing cataracts, glaucoma or refractive error. They won’t work. Whether they’re harmless depends entirely on whether you’re using them instead of treatment.

Never do this. Putting anything into your eye that did not come from a pharmacy or a clinician. Breast milk. Urine. Plant sap. Crushed leaves. Sugar solutions. Animal products. Preparations from a healer, however experienced or well-intentioned.

The eye has no meaningful barrier against what you place on it. There is no organ in the body less forgiving of contamination.

Warning signs that mean stop immediately

If you’ve been using any remedy and any of these appear, stop and get to an eye hospital the same day:

• Pain that is worsening rather than improving
• A white or grey spot visible on the coloured part of your eye
• Vision that is dropping, blurring or clouding
• Increasing sensitivity to light
• Discharge that is thick, yellow or green
• Swelling that is spreading to the lid or face
• Any symptom that hasn’t improved after two days

A white spot on the cornea is the one to memorise. That’s what a corneal ulcer looks like from the outside, and it is a same-day emergency. Read more about the warning signs of eye infection and when they can’t wait.

What We’d Rather You Did

None of this is an argument that Ghanaian traditional medicine is worthless. Some of our most important pharmaceuticals originated in plants, and Ghanaian medicinal flora is genuinely under-researched.

But “this plant contains an active compound” and “this preparation is safe to put in your eye” are separated by an enormous amount of work — sterility, concentration, toxicity testing, delivery. That work hasn’t been done for the preparations being used on eyes in Ghana today.

The practical position is simpler than the debate suggests. Drink the tea if you enjoy it. Just don’t let it become the reason you waited fifty-one days.

Most of what causes blindness in this country is preventable, treatable, or both — but only inside a treatment window that closes. Come and be examined, find out what you’re actually dealing with, and then decide.

Frequently asked questions

Can herbal tea cure cataracts?

No. A cataract is a physical clouding of the lens inside the eye and cannot be dissolved by anything taken orally. Surgery is the only treatment that restores vision, and it’s among the most successful procedures in medicine.

Is it safe to put breast milk in a baby’s eye?

No. It’s one of the most common traditional eye remedies in West Africa and one of the most frequently implicated in infection. Breast milk is not sterile and offers no protection to the eye surface. If your baby has eye discharge or redness, they need to be seen — paediatric eye problems progress quickly.

I’ve already been using a herbal remedy in my eye. What should I do?

Stop, and get examined as soon as possible — today if you have pain, a white spot or reduced vision. You will not be judged. We see this often, and the sooner we look, the more we can usually save.

Are there any natural things that genuinely help eye health?

Yes, through diet rather than application. Leafy greens, orange and yellow vegetables, and oily fish support retinal health. Not smoking and controlling blood sugar and blood pressure matter more than any supplement.

Does NHIA cover eye treatment?

Yes. St. Thomas Eye Hospital accepts NHIA across all branches. Cost should not be the reason you delay — see our full range of services.

Book an examination

St. Thomas Eye Hospital has branches in Mataheko, Osu, Tema and Kumasi. Board-certified ophthalmologists, full diagnostic imaging, and surgical care. NHIA accepted.

📞 Find your nearest branch: stthomaseyehospital.com/our-branches

If you have eye pain with a visible white spot, or vision that has dropped suddenly, do not wait for an appointment. Come in.