Recently, a Nigerian university lecturer raised global hope for the cure of the dreaded HIV/AIDS pandemic. The lecturer, Professor Maduike Ezeibe of Michael Opara University of Agriculture in Umudike, Abia State, said he has discovered a drug that can cure the HIV virus while addressing the media in Umudike. The professor of veterinary medicine sought collaboration from the federal government, pharmaceutical industries and universities in the country towards mass production of his drug called anti-viral therapy.
Ezeibe’s claim of cure for the world’s most dreaded disease ought to be a medical breakthrough and a national pride especially against the backdrop of global research by scientists desperately in search of cure to the disease which, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), has claimed the lives of more than 25m people in the past three decades across the world, sickening more than the number of those killed. Added to the global worry is the stigmatisation of persons living with the illness whose number is estimated to be hundreds of millions although the WHO could not supply the data.
The don further claimed that the anti-viral therapy is clinically accepted globally as a cure for HIV/AIDS because it has been tested on persons who were positive to HIV/AIDS and it worked effectively. He also said that the drug “brought down the viral load of some of those who had tested positive to HIV/AIDS’’. In the effort to stop the scourge of HIV/AIDS, we understand that countries in the world, most especially Africa and Asia have spent billions of dollars but the efforts can best be likened to pouring water on a duck’s back. This is because the disease keeps defying all medical discoveries and treatments. It remains an irony that despite the several billions of dollars committed to
eradicating the scourge by the advanced nations of the world, as well as reputable global foundations and philanthropists, it constitutes the greatest threat to humanity. But a cheery development emerged when a major progress in the search for cure/control of the virus was made by some scientists with the establishment of a centre by a pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States dedicated to eradicating the disease. A major focus of the new collaboration was the ‘shock and kill’ approach for curing HIV, which involves unmasking dormant HIV lurking in patients’ immune cells, before boosting the immune system to destroy all traces of the virus.
Back at home, efforts of orthodox and unorthodox researchers/scientists have turned out to be a mirage or their claims getting consumed by controversies at the end of the day.
Expectedly, Ezeibe is sounding like a lone voice in the wilderness. He lamented that neither the federal government nor any agency in the country had shown interest in the drug which he described as a scientific breakthrough whereas the British and American journals have published the procedure he adopted to manufacture the drug.
Ezeibe’s discovery raises many issues: what role are governments playing to fight the pandemic? Is the federal government playing its part adequately? What is a body like National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) doing to help out? The astronomic rate of vulnerability to the scourge is scary, and if adequate attention is not given to it by relevant organisations and institutions, humanity will continue to be at a great risk. But the critical question is – does this bring us any closer to HIV cure? According to Ezeibe, while the anti-retroviral drugs currently given to those afflicted by HIV/AIDS only eliminate the virus in the blood, his drug eliminates it in the tissues.
As a further proof of the potency of the anti-viral drug, he advised anybody who tested positive to HIV/AIDS to “ask his doctor to browse his website, read the publications on the internet on the efficacy of the drug, and if the doctor is convinced that the medicine can lead to a cure of HIV/AIDS, he should apply to the university through the vice chancellor for the procurement of the medicine”.
We recall the claims made by Dr. Jeremiah Abalaka to have discovered a cure for the pandemic disease some years back. However, rather than getting the backing of the relevant stakeholders in assessing the efficacy of his remedy, he was hounded out of the country. The nation should listen to Prof. Ezeibe and give his claim a chance.