The Ghana AIDS Commission has said that its position that the disease has no known cure, despite contrary claims by some herbal practitioners, stands vindicated.

 According to acting Director-General of the Commission, many victims of AIDS would have been alive, had they not been under the mistaken assumption that herbal treatment was better than approved antiretroviral drugs.

“At least now we know that what AIDS Commission has been saying is true. We have been vindicated that herbal medicine cannot cure AIDS,” Mr. Steve Kyeremeh Atuahene, noted on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show (SMS) Thursday.

Mr. Atuahene spoke on the back of the latest Joy News’ Hotline Documentary, ‘Pills and Herbs.’

The emotional documentary which was aired on Thursday, May 16, is the story of two AIDS patients. A media advertisement lured them into abandoning their antiretroviral drugs for an herbal treatment. One has long been dead and buried. The other one is paralysed and strapped to a wheelchair.

Heartbroken by the narrative, Mr. Atuahene bemoaned the herbal medicine industry with great potential yet left unregulated.

“The regulators are not doing what they have to do. There is evidence that people are dying because regulators are not working,” he noted.  

But the problem is worse than that.

According to Mr. Atuahene, the media which is supposed to “to be protective agency” has allowed “false claimers to put their adverts on their networks.”  These invariably fleece the people as well as kill them at the end of the day. 

Reinforcing the Commission’s campaign that AIDS has no cure, he said that antiretroviral drugs help to keep one alive and in a healthy state. The drugs are free. 

New HIV infections in Ghana have shot up to an alarming 70.15% in just one year. The figure increased from 12,000 new infections in 2015 to 20,148 in 2016.

The increase in new infections is a matter of concern. Ghana recorded significant gains in the key target areas of ending HIV/ AIDS for five years.

The figures were contained in a report by the National AIDS Control Programme. The 2018 report also indicates that the Volta Region and then  Brong Ahafo Region topped the chart of HIV/AIDS prevalence. The Finder newspaper reported.

Responding to accusations that the Ghana AIDS Commission has gone to sleep after exhausting its donor funds, Mr. Steve Kyeremeh Atuahene said they have not. According to him, their efficiency is seen in the fact that, it is hardly possible to identify people showing symptoms of AIDS anymore.

“Government has not gone to sleep,“ he maintained.

He has, however, made a passionate appeal to the media to support them. According to him, their media campaigns are woefully inadequate.