Gambian President Yahya Jammeh |
The Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has
said that dozens of HIVand AIDS patients in the tiny West African state
have been cured using his secret concoction of boiled herbs, Reuters reports.
Jammeh first announced he had found a
natural remedy to cure HIV and AIDS in 2007, stirring anger among
Western medical experts who claimed he was giving false hope to the
sick.
“Who am I to expect that everybody would
praise me,’’ Jammeh said in a state television broadcast on Sunday
evening, announcing that 68 patients had been cured and discharged from a
treatment centre.
“Just as the Prophet Mohammed prevailed
and established Islam, I have also prevailed to cure HIV/AIDS to the
point that 68 are being discharged today,’’ he said.
The World Health Organisation and the UN
have said Jammeh’s HIV/AIDS treatment is alarming mainly because
patients are required to cease their anti-retroviral drugs making them
more prone to infection.
The president said the cured group was
the seventh batch of HIV/AIDS patients undergoing his herbal remedy to
have been discharged since the treatments began five years ago.
Jammeh came to power in The Gambia, a
sliver of land on Africa’s west coast that is popular with sun-seeking
European tourists, in a bloodless military coup in 1994.
He is accused by activists of human
rights abuses during his rule, and recently drew international criticism
for executing nine death row inmates by firing squad.
Jammeh said on Sunday that his
government would fully integrate “natural medicine’’ to all the
country’s hospitals, to complement Western medical techniques.
Other African leaders have drawn criticism for extolling the power of natural remedies to combat AIDS.
Source: Punch
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