Can traditional Chinese herbs cure patients with HIV, AIDS

Representing the seventh round of cases successfully treated since 2007, 68 people were recently discharged from Gambia's Presidential Alternative Medical Treatment Programme (PAMTP) after reportedly being cured of either HIV or AIDS. Reports indicate that the confidential blend of boiled herbs developed by Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has once again proven efficacious, illustrating not only that Western medicine is greatly lacking in its ability to effectively treat these epidemic conditions, but also that nature has once again trumped the laboratory when it comes to true healing.

It was about five years ago when Jammeh first announced, to the chagrin of conventional physicians everywhere, that he had successfully developed an herbal concoction capable of not only treating, but also curing both HIV and AIDS. Since that time, PAMTP has enrolled and treated dozens upon dozens of people with the conditions, many of whom have experienced dramatic results, according to reports. And yet both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN) continue to fight against the treatment, claiming that it puts patients at risk.

"The objective of my medication is to get rid of the virus that the patients are infected with and I have made [this] very clear since the start of my treatment program," Jammeh is quoted as saying by The Daily Observer. "Because our salvation is when we go back to our natural pharmacists (forest), we will use Western medicine as complementary to natural African medicine."

U.S. approach to medicine still pushes natural remedies to the back seat
In the U.S., the opposite approach is taken -- that is, if any sort of complementary approach is taken at all. At best, so-called "alternative" treatments, which usually involve the use of natural herbs and other non-patented remedies, are typically added onto an existing conventional regimen. The case of treating HIV and AIDS, conventional doctors still employ the use of antiviral drugs that merely manage disease symptoms rather than actually fight the disease.

According to JollofNews, Jammeh's treatment contains a blend of green paste, bitter drink, and bananas, the latter of which was shown in a 2010 study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry to help prevent the transmission of HIV, the virus believed by many to cause AIDS. During the time of the treatment, patients are advised not to take any conventional antiviral medications.

In his announcement, Jammeh explained that these and various other "natural medicine" techniques will be integrated into every hospital throughout Gambia, and that Western treatments will only be used to complement them. The West African country also recently hosted a five-day training conference on HIV and AIDS to teach other countries how to strategically fight HIV and AIDS infections throughout the region.