Stop proclaiming cures for HIV/AIDS - Sai

Professor Fred T. Sai, Government Advisor on HIV/AIDS has warned herbalists, spiritualists and other traditional health practitioners to desist from proclaiming cures for the dreaded HIV/AIDS diseases since it had the tendency of putting a blot on a scientific approach to handling the disease. In an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Monday, Prof. Sai said so far there had not been any cure whatsoever for the disease anywhere in the world.

"Therefore, I would like to plead with traditionalists and herbalists to stop making cure claims which are later found to be untrue."

"These false claims usually create alarmist situations and give people, especially sufferers a false hope and non-infected persons a sense that they can live their lives anyhow."

Prof. Sai said the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service's assessment of some of the drugs presented by herbalists and traditional practitioners revealed that even though some could reduce skin rashes and make HIV/AIDS sufferers look rather healthy, "nothing close to a cure had been attained yet, even with those drugs."

He said it would take about five years after administering the drugs on a patient to find out if the patient had been cured. "As things stand now there is no such finding from a comprehensive scientific point of view that we can ascribe to."

He said traditionalists and herbalists would be invited to the forthcoming International Research Conference slated for this month in Accra where both orthodox and traditionalists could share ideas and move on the fight against the pandemic.

Prof Sai said a number of drugs had been collected from some herbalists and traditional medicine practitioners for analysis; " most of them were found to have no such potency as claimed. I think we should be careful how fast we come out with claims of cure for HIV/AIDS."