Senate Mandates NACA, NPHCDA to interface with HIV/AIDS cure claimant

Against the outright dismissal by the National Agency for the Control of AIDS, (NACA) of an HIV/AIDS cure claim by a Professor of Veterinary Medicine and Clinical Virology at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Abia State, Professor Maduike Ezeibe, the Senate Committee on Primary Health Care and Communicable diseases, has urged relevant government agencies including NACA and the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) to interface with the cure claimant in order to subject his claim through scientific means.

The Committee led by Senator Mao Ohuabunwa on Tuesday during the 2017 budget defence session of NPHCDA inquired into reasons why the agencies have refused to dialogue with the professor before dismissing his claims without going through normal scientific measures in ascertaining or disproving such studies, in accordance with world standards.

It will be recalled that NACA had penultimate week in a statement said there was no basis for a claim to the cure of AIDS as described in the study presented by Ezeibe.

Director General of NACA, Dr Sani Aliyu, in the statement said “The claim for a HIV/AIDS cure is not new.

It is also not new to find a scientist using ambiguous scientific methods and practices to buttress this claim, and to find obscure journals increasingly prepared to publish these claims.”

Ezeibe according to media reports said that the drug with “Aluminum Magnesium Silicate” was tested on 10 persons living with HIV.

It was also reported to that the drug has a clinical outcome of an ability to “reach all cells” and making HIV “a conquered organism.”

The Senate Committee’s members had since the beginning of this week rued on the possibility of interfacing with the cure claimant to further verify his claims to be either true or false.

On Monday, the committee questioned on the rationale behind NACA’s dismissal of the claim without recourse to Ezeibe.
Similarly, on Tuesday, The Senate committee queried the Executive Secretary of NPHCDA Dr. Faisal Shuaib if he was aware of the claim to which he replied in the affirmative.

Shuaib said he was in agreement with his NACA counterpart that the study quoted by Ezeibe did not conform with standard ethical protocols for clinical trials.
  
The NACA DG (Aliyu) told the committee that the study quoted by Ezeibe did show evidence that he obtained ethical clearance from an appropriate body in Nigeria to conduct the study, and only quoted only ambiguous evidence that informed consent was sought from the evidently vulnerable patients. 

“We are concerned that the publicity given to these claims will stop patients from taking life-saving antiretrovirals and give them false hope of a cure.

It will be a great disservice to this vulnerable group of patients for the media to disseminate these claims in absence of sound scientific evidence.”