With an estimated five percent of needed medicines available, Venezuela on Friday launched a health plan that relies on herbs and natural remedies. The “100 percent Natural Health Plan” seeks the “rescue of historic and patrimonial health , knowledge of the old ladies,” President Nicolas Maduro said at the presidential palace. Oil-rich and once one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, Venezuela has seen its economy decimated under Maduro. Falling oil prices, deadly protests, and corruption have coincided with chronic food and medicine shortages, and inflation which the IMF forecasts will exceed 2,300 percent in 2018. Citizens have demonstrated against shortages of essential goods including medicines. The country’s medical union estimated Venezuela’s pharmaceutical shortage at 95 percent. “I am curing a terrible flu that hit me at the beginning of the year with chamomile, aloe, lemon and a little honey,” Maduro said. “This comes from the ancestral knowledge […]