'Thippatheega Kashayam'

I've got a bee in the bonnet from something I ran into at Timbaktu.

So for a few months now, we have been hearing about this viral fever called 'chikungunya' that has been rampaging in south India. Its mainly affected Karnataka and AP and in very large numbers -- order of 25000 atleast according to one report I read. Its not fatal, the symptoms are fever and severe body aches that last upto 2 weeks. Its transmitted by mosquito bites. There is no cure for this, currently they just use symptomatic relief drugs and wait for the fever to run its course.
Since my first trip to Timbaktu I kept consistently hearing about a treatment for this fever that they more or less discovered themselves at Timbaktu. This is a herbal portion that they make from the stem of a local plant -- 'thippa'. The potion is called 'thippatheega kashayam'. They have been trying it widely, on the students in the school, on Timbaktu workers, and the villages around the area, even in Ananatapur town and they are very convinced at this point that this is a very effective medicine and brings the fever and aches down much faster than otherwise, in most cases.
For some reason, despite all the talk about the effectiveness of this thing, I did not hear anything about them trying to spread the word about this widely. On this visit I asked Mary (co-founder, and the person I work with actively there), about this and she said a couple of things : a.) from their experience word about this kind of stuff spreads quickly on its own, and her lots of people in the surrounding areas have started using this b.) they talked about this to some doctor friends in Anantapur, who have also started prescribing it, and they expect that these friends are working to publicise it within the medical community.
It seems to me that this is a very cool thing -- a low cost (presumably!) local, herbal medicine that works where no other current solution exists, for a widespread problem that is causing a lot of suffering. I'm getting somewhat worked up about this and wondering if something can be done to research this more and if it holds up, to spread the word widely.