A new kind of herbal tea

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet — Ever heard of gipah herbal tea?

It’s a tea concocted out of a native herbal plant whose production is now a source of livelihood of members of the Kalanguya tribe of the Agrarian Reform Community (ARC) Lusod in Kabayan, Benguet, and neighboring places.

Gipah herbal tea production within the Mt. Pulag Reservation in Benguet is hitting the proverbial two birds with one stone. While providing a viable source of income for the Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries (ARBs), it is also ensuring biodiversity and maintaining nature’s beauty in the ARCs.

Similarly important, as it has been turned into a "One Town, One Product" (OTOP) project through the encouragement of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), it has become a backyard, as well as a community effort, of residents of ARC Lusod.

Since the tea was first packaged a few years back, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has played a key role in the promotion of the product. At its anniversary in June 2006, BAR recognized the wonder of gipah and commended the ARBs producing gipah tea. It helped in training, packaging concepts, and promoting and patronizing the product.

Subsequently, the Lusod Agrarian Reform Community Multi-Purpose Cooperative (LARCMPC) focused its activities on processing and distributing gipah.

As reported by Rose Siloy of the DAR-Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), gipah contains plenty of vitamin C and is said to assure healing of cough or colds. When taken after a hard day’s work, it reportedly relieves fatigue.

Gipah’s dried leaves or stem, when boiled, can be used as treatment for pneumonia (in children) and lobar pneumonia influenza, acute gastroenteritis, bacillary dysentery, appendicitis, postoperative infections, and cellulitis.

As poultice it can treat ulcerating and bleeding wounds, scalds, burns, traumatic injuries, bone fractures, and rheumatic arthritis.

In his book titled Common Medicinal Plants of the Cordillera Region — A Trainor’s Manual for Community-based Health Programs published in 1989, Dr. Leonardo Go said that gipah has anti-bacterial properties and anti-cancer activities for middle and advanced stages of lung, gastric, colon, and other digestic tract cancers.

Chinese studies have also found the anti-bacterial effect of the gipah concoction. The Chinese have manufactured drug preparations in the forms of tablets and injectibles. — Rudy A. Fernandez