HERBALIST APPEALS TO GOVT, MOH FOR HELP (PAGE 22, MAY 28, 2010)

THE Eastern Regional Chairman of the Ghana Federation of Traditional Medicine (GHATFRAM), Dr Emmanuel Kyei-Osei has appealed to the government and the Ministry of Health (MoH) to conduct scientific and clinical test into his herbal medicine, which he claims is a potent cure for HIV and AIDS.
He said the test would determine the efficacy or otherwise of the herbal medicine, which he said, had helped to improve the health status of some persons living with HIV and AIDS.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic in Koforidua, Dr Kyei-Osei said “a positive outcome of the test will help the country to produce large quantities of this herbal concoction to treat persons living with HIV and AIDS.”
The 72-year-old herbalist, who is the proprietor of the “Enso Nyame Ye Herbal Clinic” in Koforidua, expressed concern over the rate at which the HIV and AIDS pandemic was claiming many innocent lives as a result of lack of cure for the deadly disease.
“How on earth can we as a nation sit down and look on helplessly when many lives are being lost through HIV and AIDS, and we are not prepared to support those who are making efforts to find a cure to the disease?”, Dr Kyei-Osei asked.
He claimed that although he had discovered a cure for the disease, the only challenge was how to draw the attention of the government, the MOH, scientists and medical practitioners at the various hospitals to monitor clinical tests on HIV and AIDS patients to ascertain the efficacy of the herbal concoction.
According to Dr Kyei-Osei, in 2004 he wrote a proposal to the MOH to provide him with between 50 and 100 PLWHAs for clinical test to verify the efficacy of the herbal medicine but he did not obtain any positive response from the authorities.
“I also recall that in 2008, the then Minister of Health, the late Major Courage Quarshigah directed the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to conduct a research into the efficacy of my medicine, but again I did not get any positive response from the CSIR, even though it came to me to collect samples of the herbal medicine for test,” he stated.
“This was in spite of the fact that I had already taken the medicine to the same CSIR at Mampong in 1995 to test for the toxification, which led to its approval”, he added.
Recounting his experiences with health personnel at some of the hospitals, Dr Kyei-Osei said he had often asked some of the HIV and AIDS patients he was treating with his herbal concoction to go for clinical evaluation to test their viral load, CD 4 and CD 8 counts but most of the doctors declined to give the patients the outcome of the results to enable them to report back to him.