Cypy Healthy

Lusaka - Zambia's government announced on Friday that widely publicized herbal drugs held to cure Aids have been proved ineffective after clinical trials conducted on dozens of HIV patients.

Health minister Angela Cifire said the six-month trial conducted on 26 HIV-positive volunteers showed that the traditional herbs could prolong the lives of sufferers, but fell short of a much-anticipated cure.

"The herbal medicines that were under study do not cure HIV infection," said Cifire.

She said herbalists had claimed that the drugs could cure Aids within a period of three months but experts decided to give it a longer period, which still failed to yield positive results.

Out of 79 herbs presented for research by traditional health practitioners, only three qualified to undergo a thorough clinical trial, said Cifire.

"None of the 26 participants died and no side effects were observed during herbal treatment," she said.

But herbalists have insisted that they can cure Aids and have asked for the trials to be continued with a bigger sample of patients.

"The sample was too small and the period was also not long enough for effective monitoring of patients," said Rodwell Vongo, chairperson of the Traditional Health Practitioners of Zambia.

The government spent 1.4 billion kwacha ($340 000) on the trial.

Zambia, which has a population of about 11 million, has a HIV prevalence rate of 16%. The government is providing free anti-retroviral drugs to 75 000 people.