Herbal treatment for Aids

Traditional healers call for fair investigation

PRETORIA -- While the battle between pharmaceutical companies and the government about medicine prices continues, traditional healers yesterday called for a fair investigation into their claim that an indigenous herb could dramatically improve the condition of Aids patients, if not cure them.

People whom doctors had sent home to die had a dramatic recovery due to the herb Sutherlandia, known as kankerbos in Afrikaans, said Credo Mutwa, a member of the executive committee of the Nyangazezizwe Traditional Healers' Organisation of South Africa.

"I don't claim this is the cure, but what it does to people is amazing. Men and women who have been sent home to die are alive now because of an ancient African herb," Mutwa said.

Asked whether he thought there would ever be a cure for Aids, the well-known visionary said: "It's right there in the violated plains of my fatherland. It is being ploughed up as a weed."

Mutwa referred reporters to Dr Nigel Gerlicka, who, with other scientists and Mutwa's help, is researching the medicinal qualities of the plant.

Gerlicka said it was a general tonic which improved many conditions associated with people living with Aids, including their quality of life.

"It is not a cure and has never been promoted as such. The last thing South Africa needs is another Virodene."

He said a Nigerian government official was already treating patients in that country with medicine made from the plant. The research was continuing, and a pilot trial would also be conducted in South Africa.

Mutwa said Sutherlandia also helped people during the 1918 influenza epidemic in South Africa.

It helped patients to regain their energy and appetite and their white blood cell count increased.

Traditional healer Virginia Rathele said she had treated about 80 Aids patients sent home to die with Sutherlandia, and not a single medicine had the dramatic effect the herb had.

Mutwa said traditional healers were being ridiculed for their claim, and even threatened with death.

His house had been broken into and some Sutherlandia seeds stolen.

"I don't care whether I die or not or whether I am ridiculed or not. I've saved many of my people and I've saved one of my children."

Sutherlandia was no "mumbo jumbo" or superstition, and scientists should thoroughly investigate it, he said.

"Our people are dying out there, and nobody seems to care."

Mutwa said there was already a demand for the plant, and it had been planted on several acres of a farm near Sannieshof in the North West.

Hot water was added to the leaves, and it was infused before being given to the patient.

Another executive committee member of Nyangazezizwe, Moses Musoke, said they also used various other herbs to treat opportunistic diseases in Aids patients.

About 60 percent of the South African population consulted traditional healers, he said.

In some cases, the healers referred patients to Western doctors, said traditional doctor Mercy Manci, chairperson of Nyangazeziwe.

If patients were already under Western treatment, they did not tell them to stop that treatment, but gave them traditional medicine too.

African people had, for centuries used birth control methods, including using the gallbladder of an animal as a condom, Mutwa said.

The organisation would host a national conference on HIV-Aids and sexually transmitted infections in Pretoria next week, to be attended by about 150 delegates, Nyangazezizwe said.

These would include speakers from Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Ghana and the United Kingdom, and representatives from UNAids, the World Health Organisation, organisations for people living with Aids and the Health Department.

Asked about the cause of Aids, Mutwa said: "When a dog bites you, you don't ask for its name or who the owner is, you scream and kick it away ... We must fight Aids not even questioning where it comes from."

Having seen many people die of Aids, he did not believe it was a natural disease, but a man-made one.

"The cure is already there if we work together ... We will conquer Aids. It can be conquered.

"We, traditional healers of South Africa, have got a powerful and positive role to play in fighting this horrible disease that is eating our people. Anyone who refuses to see this needs spectacles thicker than mine."

He lamented the lack of recognition and even the demonisation of traditional leaders.

At some hospitals people were told not to take traditional medicine, Mutwa said.

"People who despise traditional healers and call them scum and rubbish should be reminded that the rubbish of this world ferti-lises the plants and makes them go green."

Mark Heywood of the Aids lobby group, the Treatment Ac- tion Campaign, said it recognised there were a number of traditional medicines which were useful in the management of HIV, especially to boost the immune system.

But, he added: "There are so-called traditional medicines that are rubbish."

The government needed to set up a proper system with scienti-fic information on which medicines were good and which were not, Heywood said. -- Sapa