By Landing Colley
Dr Tamsir Mbowe, a top medical doctor in The Gambia has affirmed the claims of the former dictator Yahya Jammeh of having a cure for the HIV/Aids virus.
The renowned doctor who was a close aide of the former dictator has shocked the nation at the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission TRRC on Wednesday.
In 2007, the Gambia’s former President Yahya Jammeh has made a declaration of having a cure for the HIV/Aids virus.
“Yes, the programme is true and the treatment is true. The former President could cure the HIV virus,” Dr Mbowe stated.
The 56 year old who was the country’s former Health Minister and the Director General of Yahya Jammeh’s Presidential Alternative Treatment Programme said he does not know what type of medicine the former President was using to cure the HIV patients, but claimed it could cure the virus.
“I cannot tell you what medication the former President was using on the patients but it could cure,” he remarked.
He added: “The entire treatment programme was true.”
He admitted that the former President was using both traditional and conventional medicine to treat the patients. He adduced that the treatment was a breakthrough as he remember the former President claimed he could cure the virus within 3 days.
“No patient has ever died in the entire ten years treatment and I have never signed a death certificate for any of the patients,” he said.
However, the former Director General of Yahya Jammeh’s Presidential Alternative Treatment Programme told the Commission that conventional medicine has no cure for the HIV/Aids virus but it sentences the patients to death.
At this juncture, the TRRC Lead Counsel Essa M Faal, has mentioned names of patients who died from the treatment programme. The witness claimed that some of these patients have died because of treatment failure.
The witness has disclosed to the Commission that the former President was consulting doctors within and outside the country for his treatment programme some of whom he does not know what they used to advise the President.
Meanwhile, the counsel has named more than ten people who died from the treatment programme which he (Mbowe) could not deny. It was put to him that the deceases would be still alive if they were taking their conventional medicine.