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AIDS advice: Eat dung to make drugs work

28^th July 2011

By Charl de Souza

When we thought the AIDS situation in Southern Africa could not get worse … we find it can!

“Eat dung to make drugs work,” HIV patients told.

HIV-positive patients in Swaziland, who are so poor they cannot afford food, are told to eat cow dung before taking anti-retroviral drugs, because the drugs do not work on an empty stomach.

To make the cow patties more appetising they are recommended to mix the dung with water.

Aids activists say that people are thinking of stopping taking AIDS drugs, because they have to have food in their stomachs.

The Swaziland government of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch who has ruled Swaziland for 25 years, is running out of funds for salaries, health care and fuel. The government has frozen public-sector salaries and asked unions to accept pay cuts.

King Mswati III has an estimated $200 million fortune and is known for his jet-set lifestyle and lavish spending on his 13 wives, each of whom has her own mansion. There is a growing public resentment which have led to calls for King Mswati to step down.

There are 230,000 people in Swaziland who are HIV-positive, of a population of 1,2 million. This is one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world.

South Africa has been in the news before about controversial HIV diets. The former South African health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told people with HIV to eat yams, garlic and beetroot instead of anti-retroviral drugs. At least these vegetables are healthier than Swaziland’s cow patty dung diet.

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