an herbal cure for HIV?

Gloria Jeremiah, an MPH student at the College of Medicine in Malawi, has created an herbal treatment — Garani MW 1 — she claims makes HIV symptoms disappear. Since journalist Bright Mhango first reported the story in Malawi’s major newspaper, The Nation, both he and Jeremiah have been overwhelmed by the demand for Garani MW 1.

In Mhango’s original article, he wrote:

Jeremiah says there is scientific evidence that her herb can make HIV disappear and that some people are free of the virus because of the drug.

A copy of Mhango’s article was posted to news aggregator Malawi Today, and the comments there are enlightening. Their focus is not so much on the veracity of claims that Garani MW 1 will make HIV symptoms disappear, but instead on how the West will conspire to keep Garani MW 1 from saving lives. For example:

God be praised if its [sic] true that is. However, I know westerner will try to frustrate this cure, because they are greedy and interestered [sic] in business.

And another:

The Genocide Virus which was meant to destroy us has a cure from us, who will want to patent it as it is a threat to a multi billion million dollar ARV business, the WHO is to Western and also benefits from the Allopathic therapy, lets strive for an AFRICAN PATENTER, where other continents will export from us.Well done! Cause ARV’s kill u financially and then take your life.

In working on an ethnographic project that drew on conversations about AIDS in Southern Malawi, I read a lot of conversations that shared conspiratorial feelings about the West and AIDS. One commonly recurring theme was that some believed AIDS was created by the Europeans/Whites as a way to control the African population. Because of this, I wondered how someone with AIDS would take to ARVs — meaning, how could they accept that something which could make them sick (see more on ARV side effects) was also prolonging their life? Especially in a context where at least a vocal minority believe AIDS was sent by Europeans/Whites — the same people who “created” ARVs.

In the mid-1990s, there was another Malawian that claimed a cure for HIV, Billy Chisupe. Chisupe’s concoction, called Mchape, had people queued up for days in hopes of curing themselves of a disease that otherwise had no treatment. In the end, Mchape was figured out to be a hoax. (See gated article here.)

"AIDS Cure Sign" taken in Accra, Ghana by Berry Fine, shared with cc license via Flickr

Malawi hasn’t cornered the market on herbal HIV cures. Last year when I was in Tanzania, I saw many people flocking to see Babu Loliondo, a man who claims to have an herbal cure for many ailments, including HIV. Even the President of Gambia has claimed his concoction of herbs and spices will cure HIV.

Even if the West is unwilling to take these “cures” seriously, those who are committed to the fight against AIDS in Africa need to take seriously the great number of people that respond to claims to a cure. How should caregivers and medical personnel respond when someone whose life has already been lengthened with ARV treatment shows a preference for an herbal remedy such that s/he stops taking the ARVs?

In looking for images for this post, I searched for “hiv cure” on Flickr. There weren’t many hits, but in the few I found, photographers would caption or tag a photo with cure when the words captured said no such thing (rather, more frequently I’d see “treatment”). In the West, we can be very quick to judge herbal treatment of HIV as some silly African witchdoctor nonsense. I’ll admit, when South Africa’s former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang would tell HIV-positive South Africans to drink lemon juice and eat garlic, I thought she was crazy. Just because I’m not a fan of Tshabalala-Msimang’s ideas of HIV treatment, that doesn’t mean traditional medicine and herbalists don’t have a place in HIV/AIDS treatment. Some of the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS can be treated with herbs and we have something to learn from that treatment — not just whether such treatment has a scientifically proven effect (though that can certainly be assessed), but why such treatments are often sought out by ordinary Africans who are themselves living with AIDS. If we can’t try to look at things from the perspective of those who are most in need of treatment, we absolutely cannot design interventions to improve their condition.