Concerns over HIV treatment of soldiers

Director-General of Tanzania's National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) Andrew Kitua has said the institute received a request for permission for testing of an alleged new HIV/AIDS treatment that South African researchers are conducting on Tanzanian soldiers, but that the trials had not yet been approved, the South African 'Mail and Guardian' newspaper reported on Friday, 5 October. Neither did Kitua know of any approval for use of the coal-based substance, oxihumate-K, being used in the research on HIV-positive soldiers at Lugalo military hospital. "We [the NIMR] are in the process of investigating what is being done, and what the status is of their trials and why regulations were not followed," the report quoted him as saying.

Lugalo military hospital was the same facility where tests were recently carried out on the discredited Aids drug Virodene, the 'Mail and Guardian' reported. It quoted Kitua as saying that an application to test Virodene, whose backers were expelled from Tanzania last month, was turned down. Tanzania was now trying to clarify if there was a link between the two groups of researchers, he added.

Enerkom, an affiliate of the South African government's oil agency, the Central Energy Fund (CEF), was conducting the Tanzanian trials in conjunction with the Pretoria University academics and with the backing of the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs, the report stated. It quoted Professor Connie Medlen, the Pretoria University immunologist handling the research, as saying that the Tanzanian army had invited Enerkom and Pretoria University to do the trials, which are due to continue for another six months. Scientists had pointed out that by Enerkom claiming oxihumate-K could boost the human immune system, it was implying the substance was a drug, the 'Mail and Guardian' reported. Neither South Africa's Health Department nor Medicines Control Council had ever authorised Enerkom to do this, or to conduct trials on HIV-positive patients, it added.