Gambian President Claims AIDS Cure

by Jordan Yerman | March 16, 2007 at 12:11 pm

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The thing is, I want to believe, as must every AIDS patient on the planet. However, until the patients taking President Jammeh's concoction can be independently assessed, it is very hard to take his claims seriously. Throughout Africa, claims have been made that various traditonal remedies will cure the illness that is laying waste to the continent, but none have been real. Most (in)famous has been South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's claims, which have been met with global derision.

Gambian Health Minister Tamsim Mbowe, a trained physician with multiple medical degrees, defended the so-called herbal cure.

"I can swear, 100 percent, that this herbal medication His Excellency is using is working. It has the potency to treat and cure patients infected with the HIV-virus," he told CNN.

What does he have to say to skeptics?

"I will tell them, as a Western medical trained doctor with 13 years experience meeting different professors, meeting different colleagues of mine, I've seen His Excellency, my leader, coming up with herbal medications that are able to treat and cure patients with HIV-virus, which have been proven within all medical and laboratory parameters."

Health officials worldwide remain doubtful of these claims. Experts also say it's in places like Gambia that the poor and desperate will latch onto anything resembling hope -- and that the government's claims are nothing more than a sick joke.

"For a country's leader to come up with such an outlandish conclusion is not only irresponsible, but also very dangerous, and he should be reprimanded and stopped from proclaiming such nonsense," said Professor Jerry Coovadia of the University of Kwa Zulu Natal in South Africa.