Monday, January 18, 2016

Revival of Jammeh's HIV/AIDS cure claim puts Gambian lives at risk unnecessarily

Health and Information Ministers among officials join celebrations
The Health, Information and Education Ministers, Omar Sey, Sheriff Bojang and Fatou Lamin Faye respectively were joined by other senior officials to help pay tribute to the Gambian dictator, Yaya Jammeh, for discovering the cure for HIV/AIDS nine years ago.

In his opening remarks, Jammeh encouraged Gambians to return to their roots by embracing traditional medicine, in addition to observing the nine anniversary of his remarkable discovery of the cure for HIV/AIDS.

The Health Minister, Omar Sey, in turn, outlined the remarkable discoveries that Yaya Jammeh has made in addition to his HIV/AIDS cure to include "other deadly diseases people believed were incurable" in the past without specifying the deadly diseases.  But the Gambian dictator's claims include cure for high blood pressure and diabetes.  The list may have grown since the last time we checked.

"Since the initiation of this landmark extraordinary treatment program [of HIV/AIDS], thousands of patients of all ages, nationalities, creed, race and people...have immensely benefited..." claimed Gambia's Health Minister.

The evidence to support Jammeh's claim that thousands have been cure is difficult to come by and officials have been elusive especially when questioned about the whereabouts of those patients who have been "cured".  They have never been able to produce them, many of whom have obviously died of the disease.  The sad part of this unfortunate craziness is their lives could have been saved because many of them were forced out of their regular retro-viral treatment and into Jammeh's treatment program.

Yaya Jammeh's medical quackery was partly responsible for UNAIDS's withdrawal from The Gambia. Now that the agency has returned, Jammeh and his team of equally irresponsible officials are back to ramp up the treatment program, once again, meaning that more Gambian lives than necessary will be poor at risk again by this mad man.