Guest Post: Julia from Ghana
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| There's Ghana! |
A total of 2,248 persons living with HIV on antiretroviral
treatment across the country have shunned medication, seeking healing at prayer
camps and from traditional healers, an AIDS commission workshop has revealed. These people only return to the
hospital after cases have worsened.
The Ghana AIDS Commission in collaboration with the Eastern
Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) and Philadelphia FIGHT, a non-governmental
organization based in the United States organised a day-long workshop for
traditional healers, religious leaders, civil society organizations and health
personnel in Koforidua on Friday.
The workshop's goal was to provide an update on the current trend
and development on HIV prevention, treatment, care and support services and to
discuss means of strengthening effective collaboration and partnership among
the stakeholders on the subject matter. At the end of the workshop, traditional healers and the
religious leaders agreed that it was imperative that they worked
hand-in-hand with the professional medical practitioners and the coordinators
to deliver effective services for People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV).
The traditional healers and the religious leaders deemed it
very important to create offices at their centers to host health personnel such
as midwives and AIDS workers, who would offer HIV tests for their
clients before commencing their treatment or services.
Stakeholders at the workshop called on the Ghana Health
Service and the AIDS Commission to set up a team whose function would be to
identify all traditional healers and prayer camps and to
establish a relationship with them to exchange methods of treatment of PLHIV. It also planned regular workshops for the
traditional healers and prayer camp operators and regular supporting
supervision on their activities in order to save many HIV and AIDS victims who
neglected their anti-retroviral treatment for prayers or unsuccessful herbal
treatment. Finally, the workshop identified stigmatization as a very huge difficulty in reducing HIV and AIDS issues, claiming that all hands
must be on deck to stop stigmatizing PLHIVs since they are humans just like any
other person.
Random Julia Thoughts: Unregulated traditional and religious ‘healers’ are a health
risk to Ghanaians. They are allowed to advertise their ‘clinics’ on national
television, wearing white jackets with stethoscopes hanging down their necks. I
bet that half of them can’t even spell ‘stethoscope’! Mind you real doctors are
banned from advertising any of their clinics.
I do understand that traditional healing has been around for
generations and there are some concoctions that work. Those authentic
treatments should be registered with the government and all concoctions should be
required to meet health guidelines. However, many treatments delivered by these
people are pure nonsense, sometimes even poisonous. Allowing traditional ‘healers’
to deliver and advertise the ‘cures’ for HIV/AIDS is utterly insane!
Both my parents are doctors in Ghana; countless times they
have seen patients who have wasted hundreds of dollars at these traditional
healers’ ‘clinics’. One patient even got his leg severely burnt at one
traditional ‘clinic’; apparently sitting under a burning chair is therapeutic! Such
patients end up coming to real hospitals half-dead and without any money remaining
for real medicine.
I understand that many of these healers cling to tradition or
culture to escape regulation. But, people are dying of HIV/AIDS. And when
people are dying we cannot negotiate with quacks. What we need to do is educate
the public on the facts and credible treatments, while suing anyone with false
claims of possessing an HIV/AIDS cure.
Ghanaian traditional ‘healers’ cannot treat HIV/AIDS and
involving them in the ‘stakeholder system’ will just give them false
credibility among their already confused patients.
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