My life changed forever when I watched my beloved wife suffer her first epileptic seizure. Each seizure brought fear and helplessness, pushing us toward desperation.

We eventually found hope in CBD oil. The improvement was profound—her seizures became less frequent and severe. But that hope was short-lived. In South Africa, accessing CBD through official channels proved incredibly difficult, with unaffordable prices and bureaucratic barriers making supply nearly impossible.

The World Health Organization estimates that 50 million people worldwide live with epilepsy, with nearly 80% in low- and middle-income countries where treatment access is limited. In South Africa, almost 1% of the population is affected, with many struggling to access adequate care.

Stop Forcing South African Epilepsy Patients to Just "Keep Seizing" While Waiting for Meds to Work
Right now in South Africa, when someone is diagnosed with epilepsy and having dozens of seizures a day, doctors hand them a standard medication and say: "You can't take an effective dose of this for two months because it might cause a fatal skin reaction. In the meantime, deal with the seizures."

Leaving a living human brain unprotected against constant neurological trauma for weeks is an absolute failure of patient care. We have a relatively safe, fast-acting tool that can be ramped up in days to act as a temporary brake—purified pharmaceutical CBD.

And what are patients given while they wait? Benzodiazepines are commonly used as adjunctive or rescue medicines for seizures, yet they can cause sedation, drowsiness, dizziness, confusion, impaired coordination, memory and cognitive problems, as well as tolerance, dependence and potentially life-threatening withdrawal. In my wife's case, benzodiazepines provided no meaningful seizure control, while making her quality of life remarkably worse.

Yet pharmaceutical CBD is treated as though its use is unacceptable because there is supposedly insufficient evidence for early use.

Let’s be entirely clear about why that evidence is skewed: Big Pharma is actively manipulating the clinical trial system to protect their profit margins, and this has distorted the data.

Multinational drug companies purposely refuse to fund trials for early, general epilepsy use. Instead, they exploit the "Orphan Drug" loophole, testing CBD exclusively as a third- or fourth-line "last resort" for tiny populations with ultra-rare, severe genetic conditions.

This creates a massive scientific bias: trials thus far make CBD look far less effective than it actually is because it is only tested on brains that have already suffered years of uncontrolled trauma and failed multiple heavy medications.

Why do they keep it this way? Because keeping CBD locked away as an exclusive, late-stage "rescue drug" allows them to secure total global market monopolies and slap an astronomical, corporate price tag on the medicine—often tens of thousands of rands a month per patient. If they funded studies to prove CBD works as a cheap, early safety net for everyone, medical schemes and public health systems would demand the price drop. They don't lack evidence because CBD doesn't work; they lack evidence because keeping it restricted is wildly profitable.

Because corporate manufacturers will never willingly fund the data that threatens their bottom line, our public institutions must step in.

We are demanding that the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA), the National Department of Health (NDoH), and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) bypass corporate influence and immediately fund Pragmatic Clinical Trials to test early-stage, add-on CBD for patients during high-frequency seizure titration windows.

Protect the brain on Day 1. Stop letting Big Pharma's greed, skewed data, and bureaucratic paperwork dictate human suffering in our healthcare system. Sign to demand a change.

What We Are Asking For
With your signatures and support, this petition will be formally submitted to the institutions with the power to investigate, fund, regulate and advance this research:

🇿🇦 Parliament of South Africa — Portfolio Committee on Health
To bring this issue before Parliament and seek government intervention and oversight regarding epilepsy treatment and access to clinical research.

🏥 National Department of Health (NDoH)
To request that the Department investigate the barriers faced by epilepsy patients and support research into early adjunctive pharmaceutical CBD.

🔬 South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC)
To request that the SAMRC consider funding or facilitating a pragmatic clinical trial investigating whether CBD can safely reduce seizure burden while patients are undergoing anti-seizure medication titration. The SAMRC's mandate includes health research aimed at improving health outcomes and translating research into policy.

💊 South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA)
To request regulatory engagement with appropriately designed clinical research into early adjunctive CBD. SAHPRA is responsible for reviewing and authorising clinical trials conducted in South Africa.

Our goal is simple:
We are not asking South Africa to assume that CBD works for every epilepsy patient. We are asking South Africa to properly investigate whether it can help protect patients during the vulnerable period while their primary medication is being titrated.

Patients deserve evidence. Patients deserve options. And patients deserve to be heard.