Newsday - December 27, 1988
Laurie Garrett. Newsday Staff Correspondent

As patients entered his consultation room in search of treatment for AIDS, the healer asked them to remove their shoes. Pelts of antelopes, leopards and other African game hung from the ceiling, snakeskins and dried lizards dangled from wall hooks and apothecary jars full of a variety of powders and dried substances sat in neat rows along the shelves. A massive zebra skin covered the floor.

At the center of it all was a throne-like chair. There sat Rodwell Vongo, secretary general of the International Traditional Researchers and director of research for the Zambian Traditional Practitioners Association, dressed in a three-piece western suit, holding a chief's tail brush in his hand and wearing a hat adorned with amulets.

"When a patient comes to me," Vongo began, "and they are a suspected HIV-positive, they are very worried, very anxious. And I try to comfort them. I try to put them at ease, to make them accept the problem. There is no way they can undress it; it's not like a jacket or a track suit. They have to accept that they are victims of the virus, and they have to be strong."

In many parts of Africa, traditional healers are playing a crucial role in the war on AIDS. But in some cases their practices may further the spread of the AIDS virus.

Once he has calmed his patients, Vongo stresses the need to be well-nourished, to take vitamins, and prepare the body for the fight against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"I then talk to them very seriously," continued Vongo. "Sometimes it is a man, he is hiding it [the infection] from his wife. Sometimes a wife, she is hiding from her man. I always tell them to be honest with one another and take the other partner in. I also encourage them to refrain from regular sex."

Vongo stressed, "I am not curing the patient, but at least I am prolonging his life, which is as much as any form of medicine can do right now." His treatment begins by attacking the key problem among African AIDS patients - diarrhea - using the brown powder from a local root. "I have had patients come to me who the hospitals could not treat; they had terrible diarrhea. And this root stops it. I had one patient gain fourteen kilograms [about 31 pounds], even though she had AIDS."

The approaches healers take vary from region to region, based on local traditions. Some healers rely heavily on bleeding and lacerating wounds, while others are basically herbalists. In many parts of Africa the healers have no basis in tradition, and would best be described as black-market drug suppliers.

Those healers who rely on bleeding and laceration represent potential AIDS transmission sources. A study of the practices of 74 healers in Ghana found that all used razors and some type of bleeding to treat their patients. More than half the healers reused their razors from patient to patient, and 39 percent said they did not routinely sterilize the razors. Among those who did sterilize their instruments, the methods used, such as soaking the razor in the local moonshine, are of dubious value.

In Tanzania, the problem is the injectionists, individuals who have no medical background but obtain drugs on the black market and inject them, for a price, into desperate patients. According to local medical doctors, these injectionists have no concept of sterilization and are essentially injecting the AIDS virus from patient to patient.

Tanzanian Minister of Health Aron Chiduo said in an interview that it is difficult for his government to track down these illegal, underground practitioners. The people seek them out, said Chiduo, because they are unable to obtain the treatments they desire from local clinics and hospitals. The solution, he said, is to cut off consumer demand for the dangerous injectionists. "One step we must take is to see that our dispensaries are supplied with drugs" so that people will not turn to the black market for treatments.

But in many parts of Africa, hospital and pharmacy shelves are virtually empty, while warehouses are stacked to the ceilings with illegally obtained drugs. In a town in central Zimbabwe, people lined up outside a boarded-up brick building, awaiting their chance to see the "doctor." Inside, a man with no medical training drew from well-stocked black-market shelves everything from digitalis to penicillin, prescribing pills and giving injections to his clients. The man, who is also a well-connected local politician and businessman, later denied having a medical practice.

On behalf of honest healers throughout southern Africa, Vongo has agitated for greater cooperation between western medical practitioners and the traditionalists. He has persuaded most of his Zambian colleagues to refrain from reusing razors during bleeding procedures, and he would like scientists to analyze the various herbs he uses to halt the horrible diarrhea that affects African AIDS patients.

"We must put our resources together," Vongo said. "We have economic problems, foreign exchange problems, shortages of drugs, shortages of doctors. Now that we have AIDS it means we must put all our resources together because, there is a so much greater need for medicine."

With a wry smile, Vongo added, "Nobody can cure AIDS, so they say, 'We are looking to Geneva,' " home of the World Health Organization. "What is Geneva going to bring, something from the moon?"

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