JAMMEH(Jollofnews) – Like any other practitioner of homoeopathy, President Yahyah Jammeh of Gambia knows that not everyone believes it works.
The dictator of the tiny West African state has defied medical opinion since 2007, when he claimed to have discovered a herbal cure for HIV-Aids. Now, the man sometimes compared to Papa Doc Duvalier, Haiti’s voodoo-practising despot, has finally found some allies in the West – a British homoeopathic group sponsored by the official suppliers of homoeopathic medicine to the Royal family.
The president has given VIP treatment to the Gambia Wellness Foundation, a London-based charity, allowing it to set up a clinical practice in the country’s interior. Its volunteers now live in a grace-and-favour house that belonged to one of Mr Jammeh’s ex-wives and have even appeared on Gambian TV chatshows. Since setting up there five years ago, the GWF’s mainly British volunteers have treated tens of thousands of people, suffering everything from malaria and dysentery to snake bites and rape trauma.
In one Bush Homoeopath blog, a product called Sulphur 30C, used to treat skin ailments, was given to a child who had swallowed bleach. “On our next visit, the parents came to see us to specifically thank us for saving their child’s life,” the blog claimed. “Sulphur 30C contains no sulphur, and even if it did, it would not be the slightest help for bleach poisoning,” said Prof Colquhoun.
In another, a child who had been badly burned after falling into a cauldron of boiling porridge was treated with “Opium 200C and a combination of burn remedies”. Prof Colquhoun said: “It’s criminal nonsense to suggest that this would help the burns or the pain. It contains no opium whatsoever.”
In a third case, the blog talked of a 16-year-old girl who had suffered a “stroke” and become mute as a result of being raped and made pregnant. The group prescribed two herbal remedies: “Narayani Shock Mix 26”, which is for easing trauma, and Staphysagria 200C, based on a plant used by ancient Greeks as a bowel-cleansing agent. “The next time we saw her, she was smiling very happily,” the blog said. “Poor girl,” said Prof Colquhoun. “This would have done nothing to help her.”
Neither the Centre for Homoeopathic Education nor Ainsworths would comment on the GWF’s activities. Ainsworths did, however, confirm that two of its own staff had attended a Bush Homoeopaths fundraiser in 2013 and prepared the charity some “general first-aid remedies”. [Source]
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