FDA cautions prayer camps against distribution of unregistered herbal medicines

The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has cautioned prayer camps and faith based organisations to desist from giving unregistered herbal medicines to unsuspecting clients for the healing of various diseases.

The Eastern Regional Director of the FDA, Samuel Kwakye, said the law required that all herbal drugs meant for public consumption and their production sites are inspected, registered and then approved to be safe for consumption.

He said that requirement is applicable to all including the prayer camps and faith based organisations and warned that the FDA will soon pursue prayer camps that are distributing unregistered herbal drugs.

The caution was given at a workshop organised by the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC) for prayer camp operators and pastors as well as the Ghana Health Service to strengthen collaboration among stakeholders on HIV and AIDS community service delivery, in Koforidua.

The workshop was organised following startling revelations that HIV careers were abandoning medical care as well as their Anti-Retroviral (ART) treatments and resorting to prayer camps leading to high defaulter rates and deaths.

Eastern Regional Technical Coordinator of the GAC, Golda Asante, said in some prayer camps, HIV carriers and persons with other communicable diseases were put together in rooms that had poor ventilation all in the name of treatment.

A survey conducted by the GAC showed that most of the prayer camp leaders had no basic knowledge of the HIV and its mode of transmission and therefore brain wash their clients that HIV was spiritual disease which could not be cured with ART except through prayers and spiritual directions.

Ms. Asante said the situation is worrying especially when the prayer camps are strategically congregating around areas with high prevalence and appealed to the prayer camps to stop deceiving people that HIV was a spiritual sickness.

She said the operations of some prayer camps remained a threat in the HIV and AIDS response especially to achieving the 90-90-90 strategy to reduce the HIV and AIDS burden by 2030 saying, it was critical for all stakeholders to play their role in conformity with the law.

The Regional Coordinating Director, Kozie Sambo, said religion is so powerful, that in spite of people’s status in society they succumbed and so urged pastors to be circumspect in their dealings with people in order not to blur their reasoning.

He appealed to the prayer camp leaders and pastors to peer review themselves to ensure that their activities did not jeopardise that of the national effort.