CAPE TOWN, Dec 5 (AFP) - Potions made of bark and crushed leaves are being used successfully to treat infections plaguing AIDS victims in Tanzania's Tanga region, a Commonwealth conference on phytomedicines heard here Monday.

American David Scheinman told delegates from Africa and Europe a German doctor had stumbled on the benefits of the traditional medicines in the region in 1991, prompting a treatment programme for some 400 AIDS victims in the coastal region.

The first guinea pig was an AIDS patient called Mohammed at a hospital in the small town of Pangani, whose condition improved markedly after taking the traditional medicines and is still alive, Scheinman said.

"Patients and doctors say the potions help increase appetite, gain weight, stop diarrhoea, reduce fevers, clear up oral thrush, skin rashes and fungus, cure herpes and clear ulcers," he said.

The treatments, which are drunk as tea or mixed with water or cocunut milk and applied to the skin, are made with three plants that grow wild in the tropics in Africa.

They are not helpful for people with advanced AIDS, but "eliminated some of the misery associated with AIDS" and patients in earlier stages of the disease reported a marked improvement in their health in one to four weeks of starting treatment, Scheinman said.

The medicines were best taken continiously and of those patients who stopped, some 32 percent reported that their symptoms returned.

The non-governmental group running the programme, the Tanga AIDS Working Group, buys the treatments from traditional healers for 1.5 dollars for each patient's supply and then administers them in state hospitals and at AIDS sufferers' homes.

"People here sometimes have nothing but aspirin to treat AIDS, and we send the plant medicines to people outside Tanga, but it is not practical to send off leaves and powder that need to be prepared," Scheinman said.

"It would be better if we could make medicines and salves out the plants."

The conference passed a resolution to fast-track research into developing phytomedicines from the plants used in Tanzania "to redress the epidemic in Africa," which is home to most of the world's AIDS sufferers.

The aim of the conference, which ended Tuesday, was to find explore exporting African medicinal plants to the rest of the world as a way of uplifting poor communities on the continent.

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