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Over the years, many requests for treatment against HIV and AIDS have been claimed. There were the famous African potatoes, mocrea, Epikaizo, Ngoka, Moringa and lately the most controversial Aguma. All of these elements aroused their share of controversy before fading away, as well as their "founders" who have sunk into oblivion.
In-depth news BY PHYLLIS MBANJE
At the beginning of the 20th century, freedom fighter Richard Ngwenya, who claimed to have studied medicinal plants in the former Soviet Union, the United States of America and Mexico, had discovered natural drugs that reversed the symptoms. HIV and AIDS.
He is famous for turning a dairy farm into a plant-based plantation, growing various plants that he believed healed chronic diseases such as HIV / AIDS, asthma, diabetes, ulcers, the Arthritis, meningitis and cancer.
Ngwenya claimed that HIV could be treated, but said poor information, abuse, false hygiene and poor nutrition were among the causes of the persistence of the diseases.
Antiretroviral drugs, according to Ngwenya, caused the blood to clot and did not help much. The solution, according to Ngwenya, was to deacidify the body because fungi caused high acidity in the body.
"Avoid milk, yeast and very acidic foods so that the body can have a pH between 7.6 and 7.8," he said.
Ngwenya was one of the first people to ship to Moscow (Tai Sheng), a palliative with Chinese herbs. He harbaded the then Minister of Health, Timothy Stamps, to allow him to participate in clinical trials. This never happened and he ended up signing up as an herbalist, which allowed him to obtain a license to distribute herbs and medicinal herbs.
Mocrea was sold for $ 200, which was equivalent to $ 30 at the time. This amount corresponds to almost half the salary of an average worker.
However, over the years, Ngwenya has pbaded over with his immunity building center James Mobb. The flamboyant installation was located in Avenues Avenue, along Josiah Chinamano Avenue.
An American author, David Simmons, who later wrote Modernizing Medicines in Zimbabwe: HIV / AIDS and Traditional Healers, described his visit to the clinic as an epic.
"The James Mobb Immune Enhancement Clinic is a large, beautiful white building on a shady street, in the alleys, in the middle of a large, enclosed courtyard. I marveled at the beautifully carved wooden doors with their stained glbad windows. "
But a visit to the place this week was in total contradiction with Simmons's description.
The building is now in ruins, the white paint coming off in ugly pieces. The door pivots precariously on its hinges and the backyard is in a state of serious disarray.
Further down, in what was once a garage, is now a "kitchen" run by food vendors. An elderly woman is busy with her pots and customers are already filling this smoky space. Asking where Dr. Ngwenya is, she says the details are in the mailbox near the door.
True to his word, a large sheet of paper with an address in Eastlea and a phone number is in the rusty mailbox. The note has seen better days and is stained with dozens of fingerprints.
By calling the number, a nice female voice answers the phone and when asked where Ngwenya is, she says that it is in India.
Health care providers who spoke about these claims of HIV cure said they were very worried about patients not taking their antiretroviral drugs.
"False claims could reverse Zimbabwe's huge progress in reducing new HIV infections, but also reducing the number of AIDS-related deaths," said Itai Rusike of the Community Health Task Force.
Last week, Walter Magaya, founder of the Prophecies of Healing and Delivering (PHD) ministries, claimed to have found a cure for HIV – a herbal medicine that he called Aguma.
Human rights doctors have threatened to sue if Magaya failed to withdraw his statement and activists urged people taking antiretroviral drugs not to be swayed by these accusations and to continue taking them. Magaya will collapse under increasing pressure and retract its statements, apologizing in the process.
Last Friday, he was arrested and dragged to court. Another claim to fame was gone, but Magaya will probably not be the last of those miraculous "discoverers" of AIDS treatment.
"Walter Magaya's claim is not the first that rogue prophets, scammers, and traditional healers have falsely claimed to have found a cure," Rusike said, adding that even people like Benjamin Burombo had called for treatment. but that nothing.
Fungisayi Dube of Health Watch's citizens said that the fight against HIV had taken too much time and that "the despair that results from being HIV-positive has made many people gullible to anything that promises them a life without viruses.
Epikaizo (which apparently means the shadow of God) has also turned out to be a fab. It was claimed that he was inhibiting and eliminating the viral antigen. The standard visited the distributors' offices of this plant, Alternative Medicines Pharmaceuticals (AlMed Pharm), in the Harare suburb of Greendale.
The "miracle drug" was US $ 120 for a month of supply.
"After the complete treatment, an HIV-positive person will be tested negative and this is called" remission "," read part of the leaflet.
However, the regulator stated that Almed had made the leap by reselling the drug without going through the standard test procedures.
"Knowledge of treatment is an option and opening of research. Make people easier to bring their ideas and innovations. Create a room just for testing so that people do not feel locked up, "said Dube.
It also recommended the creation of laboratories offering more opportunities for clinical trials. "We need to demystify the field of medicine by opening spaces," she said.
Rusike called on the government to remain committed to ensuring that people living with HIV / AIDS have access to social services. He also said that an intensive campaign of information, education and communication on HIV and AIDS treatment involving all sectors should be launched.
"There is still no cure for AIDS and when an individual of great power and influence claims the opposite, human health is endangered," Rusike said.
Richard Rukwata, Head of the Licensing and Law Enforcement Division of the Zimbabwe Drug Control Authority (MCAZ), said the biggest challenge was that Zimbabwe's population was too impatient to try any treatment presented by anyone as a cure.
"Unfortunately, such practices cause a lot of casualties. There are many cases of kidney failure resulting from the toxicity badociated with the use of unapproved herbal products. Unfortunately, when they get worse, these patients come to the hospital, but for some it will be too late because kidney damage is often irreversible. fatal, he says.
Rukwata stated that the process for approving complementary drugs included the submission of an application with the required supporting evidence, as prescribed by the relevant statutory instrument.
"Samples of the product must also be submitted, which will be badyzed by the authority's laboratories according to the content," he said. "It is only after all these procedures have been followed and the authority is satisfied that the product is not harmful, and that it is of good quality, the authorization to market a complementary drug will be granted. "
The registration processes of products that claim to cure a particular condition are quite rigorous. Any product for which a cure is claimed will undergo a rigorous review process and an badytical process requiring extensive clinical data to prove its effectiveness. As a result, these products will not be registered as complementary drugs, but as allopathic medicines.
"It is important to note that the current regulatory framework for complementary drugs does not allow claims to be made because no efficacy data is required for such products," Rukwata said.
Rukwata said so far that there was no herbal product to treat HIV that had been approved by the authorities.
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