Tradi-practitioners brainstorm on HIV/AIDS treatment

The training-of-trainers workshop was intended to get the traditional doctors sufficiently acquainted with the manifestations of HIV/AIDS so as to improve their treatment of the disease

By Ojong Steven Ayuk in Yaounde

Eighty-five percent of Africa’s populations resort to traditional medicine for their healthcare needs, yet the role and implication of tradi-practitioners in HIV/AIDS treatment and management has generally been ignored.

Members of the Cameroon Association for the Promotion of Traditional Medicine (PROMETRA) have blamed this on the way public health authorities perceive HIV/AIDS.

According to members of PROMETRA, opportunistic infections suffered by AIDS patients such as like malaria, herpes zoster, cough, diarrhoea, rash etc were commonly treated with traditional medicine even before the discovery of HIV/AIDS.

PROMETRA members made these and other remarks at a workshop to train traditional healers on the manifestations of HIV/AIDS with a view to better their understanding of the disease and to improve the treatments dispensed. The three-day workshop that ends
today took place at the Palais des Congrès here and brought together some 50 traditional healers from the 10 provinces of Cameroon.

Speaking at the sidelines of the workshop, PROMETRA president, Dr Edward Fai Fominyen, said the FABEG (healers self-proficient training) method, adopted by PROMETRA for treatment of HIV/AIDS and other related diseases, requires that healers have a good knowledge and understanding of diseases before they can dispense
treatment.

PROMETRA, Fai Fominyen said, currently has a potent drug for HIV/AIDS treatment, concocted from five medical plants, and scientifically tested in laboratories in Africa and the USA.

The three-day workshop had as objectives to train some
traditional healers on the manifestations of HIV/AIDS so that they should in turn train other colleagues on the field, with a view to improving their handling of the decease, Fominyen said.

The members of PROMETRA, during the workshop, brainstormed on aspects like HIV prevention and management as well as fighting against the stigmatisation of seropositive persons. They also discussed on the treatment of STDs, diarrhoea and other diseases.