President who claims he has a cure for Aids
By Patrick Wachira
The world has yet to decide how to react to claims that Gambian President Yahya Jammeh can cure HIV/Aids, even as science admits a cure is still a mirage.
And as medical practitioners insist that the best approach to the matter is abstention, faithfulness to one uninfected partner and use of condoms, the claim by the politician has been dismissed as hot air.
Indeed, over a year since he first made the claim, there are no documented cases of individuals who were tested before and after the tests, who can testify that his herbal cure, save for reports from the country’s state-run media.
The concoction of bitter yellow herbs and bananas is said to do the trick and has achieved what the whole world could not.
Just after he began the controversial therapy that had the world waiting to exhale, Jammeh quipped: “I can treat asthma and HIV/Aids... Within three days the person should be tested again and I can tell you that he/she will be negative”. As if doubting that he would be believed, he added, almost philosophically: “I am not a witch doctor and in fact you cannot have a witch doctor. You are either a witch or a doctor.”
The patient’s body
To add weight to the claim, the country’s Health Minister Tamsir Mbow said the herbal medicines were to be taken orally and applied all over the patient’s body.
Treatment begins with the president applying the green paste on his patient. It is stored inside a deli-style plastic container. Next comes a grey-coloured solution contained in an old Evian bottle and splashed on the patient’s skin. This is followed by a yellow-coloured, tea-like brew, which the patient is asked to drink. The therapy is administered many times over several weeks before the President declares his patients as being finally “cured”.
Mbow, himself a doctor, was widely quoted as having declined to say what the concoction was made from, merely saying that its composition would be made known to the world “soon”.
Well, one year and four months later, the world is still waiting and Mbow has not lived up to his promise.
Not many people believed one of his alleged patients, a university lecturer, Ousman Sowe, who said he had noticed a significant weight increase in just the days of taking the “medicine” and was no longer constipated.
He was quoted as asserting: “I have 100 per cent confidence in the President and I am taking the medication with all confidence.”
What experts have found objectionable is that those the President has put on medication are prevented from taking Anti-Retroviral drugs.
Indeed, the order is seen as retrogressive as it weakens the already fragile immune system of the patients, making them even more vulnerable to infections.
The President argued, then, that his medication should not be taken along with other drugs, because he did not want his patients to develop “complications”.
Encourages promiscuity
The local representative of UNDP, Fadzai Gwaradzimba cast doubt on the veracity of the claims saying the alleged cure could encourage promiscuity. That earned her instant ejection at the orders of the President.
In August last year, Jammeh made a similar claim, saying he had developed treatment for high blood pressure, by use of a single dose herbal drug. Again, the world treated this as hot air.
Now, there is no knowing what this ‘all-knowing’ President will say next.
Is he perhaps a genius that the world has refused to recognise? Only time will tell but as of now, the man is keeping other “inventions” close to his chest.
