WHILE the battle between pharmaceutical companies and the government about medicine prices rages on, traditional healers say an indigenous herb could dramatically improve the condition of Aids patients, if not cure them completely.
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,” said Mutwa.
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.”
Dr Nigel Gerlicka, who is researching the medicinal qualities of the plant, says it is a general tonic that improves 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 still continuing, and a pilot trial would also be conducted in South Africa.
Meanwhile, Bristol-Myers Squibb has raised the stakes in the scramble to cut Aids drug prices in Africa by announcing it would sell two drugs for a combined $1 a day, a price it said was below cost.
The move comes one week after rival Merck and Co unveiled its own round of new price cuts, and is further evidence that the drugs industry is bowing to pressure to increase supplies of cheap life-saving medicines.
Bristol-Myers said Videx and Zerit would be made available at 85 and 15 cents a day under a United Nations-backed access programme, which has so far seen supply agreements struck with Senegal, Uganda, Rwanda and Ivory Coast.
Western drug companies are currently embroiled in a fierce legal battle with the government of South Africa, the country with the world’s highest number of HIV infections.
Bombay-based Cipla Ltd shocked the industry last month by announcing it planned to offered a cocktail of Aids drugs for as little as $350 a year, or less than $1 a day. – Reuters
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