SOUTH AFRICA: Poor black South Africans turn to traditional healers to help in fight against HIV/AIDS

Record ID: 175204

  • Title: SOUTH AFRICA: Poor black South Africans turn to traditional healers to help in fight against HIV/AIDS
  • Date: 20th November 2000
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF MARKET STALLS (10 SHOTS) VARIOUS OF CAMERA-SHY PATIENTS OUTSIDE LULU NGUBANE'S HOUSE / TRADITIONAL HEALER LULU NGUBANE ATTENDING TO A PATIENT (5 SHOTS) SV/SCU'S: NGUBANE'S TRADITIONAL MEDICINE BEING POURED (3 SHOTS) SCU: (SOUNDBITE) (Zulu) NGUBANE SAYING: "I was afraid of AIDS. One night I dreamt of my father. He was calling me saying people are dying, being wip
  • Embargoed: 5th December 2000 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA
  • Country: South Africa
  • Topics: Health
  • Reuters ID: LVAHB2EKMB75PVGFB82R6GWSI70
  • Story Text: Even when Africans know and accept that they are HIV positive or dying from AIDS related diseases, they can't afford to do much about it. Very few Africans can afford the average medical cost of ten dollars a day. That's why a growing number of people are turning to traditional healers for help. And even sceptics cannot ignore some of the intriguing results that the traditional healers are turning up - using less than orthodox methods.
    A trio of young men singing a local tune down a street in Durban, South Africa. Behind them, the stalls of the market place are packed with all sorts of roots, powders and herbs.
    Even crocodile heads and hedgehog skulls are on display. In fact, anything believed to have some sort of healing power can be found here.
    Traditional medicine plays an important role in the lives of many across Africa. It's thought that around 50 percent of the population consult a traditional healer when they fall sick. So it's no surprise that a large group of people is waiting today: outside Lulu Ngubane's house. He's an iNyanga, or traditional healer.
    What's surprising is that some of his patients don't want their faces shown on television because they're searching for a cure for AIDS. This man's come to fetch a bottle of Ngubane's milk, as the dark liquid is being called. The muti or traditional medicine is reportedly relieving some of the symptoms of HIV and AIDS and is being called a cure for the disease because of the help it's providing to sick and desperate people.
    "I was afraid of AIDS. One night I dreamt of my father. He was calling me saying people are dying, being wiped out. So I asked, what should I do? He laughed then told me where to go to pick the herbs and how to prepare them", says Lulu Ngubane That was three years ago. Lulu Ngubane's been a traditional healer for nearly 20 years now, a skill he learned as a boy from his late father, a medicine man who knew the curative strengths of herbs. But his claim of a cure for AIDS along with word from former patients that their HIV status reversed from positive to negative - is understandably being treated with caution.
    "Traditionally I can say Yes, I can cure AIDS. But according to doctors, they say they are still researching. But people say I can cure AIDS. The results are showing it. Some come to me dying, unable to walk. I treat them and they thank me after feeling better. But researchers say it's early for me to say I can cure AIDS", Ngubane said.
    Ngubane has become the centre of attraction for his claim.
    A constant flow of human traffic chugs through his home, most of them after the magic potion.
    One bottle sells at 25 rand, just over three U.S. dollars.
    That's much cheaper than AZT and other medical therapies currently available for people with HIV. Important considerations in a country and community grappling with poverty.
    His work has also taken on the air of a medical laboratory.
    Ngubane's patients have to provide saliva samples.
    These are packed, along with a report and sent to a nearby medical school.
    At the University of Natal's virology department, Professor Allan Smith puts the specimens through testing to gauge their effects.
    "We need to see whether the herbal medicines they use are effective or not. Now one way of doing that is to analyse the medicines in the laboratory. But this is terribly expensive and very, very difficult because they use a whole range of different herbs, so we don't know which one is active and so forth", Smith says.
    Professor Smith adds that in the absence of dedicated research funds, not much more than just rudimentary tests can be carried out on the effect of Ngubane's treatment.
    "I have seen very sick patients and I have seen the gain weight. And I've seen them with diseases that I can identify in scientific terms improving markedly so I have seen his patients improving, a clinical improvement. But this is ancedotal. I couldn't publish a paper in a scientific journal saying that this person has got better. I couldn't do that. I have got to have laboratory proof".
    This means no matter how helpful they are in the current situation, Ngubane's methods won't gain scientific or medical credibility. But because his muti is doing something to help the sick, Ngubane's knowledge cannot be dismissed as a load of superstitious mumbo jumbo. Especially when people like 32 year old Zipho Dube swear by it.
    "I was sick with AIDS", Dube said. "I started coming to old man Ngubane in October last year. When I started taking his treatment my health improved dramatically. Towards the end of November I was feeling much better. I was very thin and am now can wear the clothes that I couldn't wear".
    She says her HIV status changed from positive to negative after taking Ngubane's medicine.
    "The tests have come clean since I started treatment.
    Three times they've come back saying now I'm okay". A widow, she is the only parent her children have left and will do anything to stay alive so they don't have to be orphans.
    However, Zipho's story shows just how uncomfortable the relationship between traditional and modern medicine is, with one fighting for authority and credibility over the other.
    It's an issue which traditional healers like Credo Mutwa raised at the International AIDS conference in South Africa in July.
    "In the colonial era people like me were ridiculed. We were called savages, peddlers of superstition, all kinds of unsavoury names but at long last our people's medicine is coming of it's own", Mutwa said.
    More and more orthodox doctors are looking to traditional medicine as a legitimate approach to treating illnesses - such as the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS. Here at Siyabazisa, a 24-hour traditional clinic in Durban, modern nursing methods are being used in tandem with traditional healing. Nurses and iziNyanga work side by side, sharing skills and knowledge. But even as the relationship between old and the new develops - claims by some traditional healers to cure AIDS, understandably set alarm bells ringing in medical and research circles.
    Unproved as they are - the claims can provide false hope, encourage charlatans to offer miracle cures and undermine the serious messages of safe sex and prevention - the only scientifically proven way of avoiding HIV and AIDS. But orthodox research has so far failed to come up with a cure for AIDS and an HIV vaccine is still a long way off. Perhaps now is the time to dedicate serious money and scientific knowledge to studying the work of people like Lulu Ngubane. While he almost certainly can't cure AIDS, he is definitely onto something.
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