A Ghanaian medical researcher claims he has found the cure for HIV-AIDS. 

Dr Ato Duncan says the efficacy of the trial drug known as Center Of Awareness (COA)-72 is not in doubt following successful human trials in South Africa.

The virus has proven to be one of science’s biggest hurdles with researchers working around the clock worldwide to find an antidote to it.

But could there be light at the end of the tunnel with a successful HIV/AIDS drug trial in South Africa?

COA-72 is an injectable herbal medicinal product developed by the Center for Awareness, which Mr Duncan says is different from COA FX which is a food supplement and immune booster approved by the FDA.

"It has the potency to smoke the viruses from latently infected source in the blood stream. The COA-72 intramuscular which smokes the virus from their hideout into the blood stream and the COA-72 intravenous which clears the virus from the blood stream providing a final cure to HIV-AIDS," he told Ayesha Ibrahim host of JOYNEWS' The Pulse programme Wednesday. 

He explained that this is a pilot project and a result of extensive research yet to go through controlled clinical trials using the internationally accepted protocol by the WHO. 

"A lot of people are excited by the discovery because it is what the world is looking for," he said, adding the reason why people are saying HIV-AIDS has no cure is because when the viruses are targeted they run into the bloodstream, cells and tissues.

Dr Duncan said the journey started in 2005 when he was working closely with the Ghana AIDS Commission and they lost all the 52 persons they were taking care of.

He recounted how the last person who died begged the team not to let anyone die of HIV-AIDS again because it was a painful disease. 

This motivated them to get to work and once they got the formulae they sent it to the Noguchi Institute for the in-vitro analysis to find out whether what they had, reacts to the virus. 

"For two hours COA -72 killed 70 percent of the virus and in 6 hours it had killed 80 percent...meaning if it works in humans, then the next day someone would get out of HIV," he said.

The team moved to Kwazulu Natal University in South Africa where a doctor used the medication to get his Ph.D. after a successful trial on 18 affected persons.

Explaining why it has not been tried on any affected person in Ghana yet, Dr Duncan said when they developed the first report at Noguchi, the team faced a lot of attacks from various quarters about the efficacy of whatever they said they had. Eventually, they moved to South Africa to do the trials.

According to him, some people who were infected but now 'healed completely' with medical reports and scientific data to prove, were at the launch of COA-72.

Joy News reporter, Maxwell Agbagba interacted with two South Africans, Bandile Mdlalose and China Ngubane who claimed they were cured of HIV/AIDS after they volunteered to use the drug.

COA-72 is not yet on the market as Dr Duncan said the team is trying to find a number of collaborators like the government of Ghana and other research institutions to go further to undertake standard controlled clinical trials so that it would be accepted by the WHO.

The drug will have to go through several other stages before it is approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority (FDA). 

Watch the interview below: