Pay witchdoctors retainers to prescribe Covid-19 precautions

A headline in Uganda’s Daily Monitor about an AFP story on the emergence of purported miracle cures for the novel coronavirus in Africa, summed up the matter succinctly: “Pandemic puts Africa’s traditional and Western medicine on collision course”.

“The desperation is combining with faith in traditional medicine, spurring a rush for almost anything claimed to prevent or cure coronavirus, despite stern scientific warnings,” the story said.

One of the latest forays by traditional medicine into the Covid-19 business, comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where drinking one’s own urine is being billed by traditionalists as a new “cure”.

It joins a longish list of supposed cures to prevent or cure coronavirus ranging from ginger, lemons, and tree bark.

The most elegant, though, arrived this week to drum rolls in Madagascar, where President Andry Rajoelina unveiled something in fancy bottles prepared with artemisia, a plant with proven efficacy in malaria treatment, and other island herbs.

Named Covid-Organics, Rajoelina declared, without batting an eyelid, that the “herbal tea gives results in seven days,” as he gulped some before an audience of ministers, diplomats and journalists.

The event was, appropriately, held at the Malagasy Institute of Applied Research, which developed the beverage.

Much better in presentation than former Gambia dictator Yahya Jammeh, who brewed some strange things in the State House kitchen, and claimed the syrup was a cure for HIV/Aids. Is Rajoelina’s herbal mix more effective than Jammeh’s?

Maybe not, but this widespread belief in miracle cures, and witchdoctors’ concoctions, needn’t go to waste.

In Southern Africa during the deadly rampage of HIV/Aids in the late 1990s, there were some creative examples of how it was put to good use. If I remember right, it was in Lesotho.

As thousands died, there was a desperate rush to sangomas, who fed patients with mixtures of cow dung, goat blood, and bizarre powders.

In East Africa, there were near riots in the Ugandan southwestern town of Masaka, where a peasant woman named Nanyonga claimed her black soil cured HIV/Aids.

The village became parked with more high-end cars than a parliament house during an African president’s State of the Union address.

Because sangomas were in it for the money, why not pay them handsomely to preach the government’s scientific messages as their own? Soon Aids ribbons adorned the entrance of every respectable witchdoctor’s shrine.

With patients seated among lion teeth, leopard skins, and bones, the witchdoctors would dance around them, blow their pipes, and reveal what the spirits had divined – they were exactly the palliatives and advice from the official health authorities’ leaflets. Because sangomas have more credibility than ministers of health, it worked.

Uganda, which has so far recorded no Covid-19 deaths, just revealed that recovered patients were treated with anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, and erythromycin, which is used to treat bacterial infections.

Let’s give witchdoctors a retainer, and tell them to advise their clients to wash their hands, maintain social distance, and seek out hydroxychloroquine and erythromycin treatment for coronavirus, then sit back and wait for the great surprise.