National committee starts checking AIDS cure claim

Nigeria’s National Committee on HIV/AIDS has begun controlled clinical verification of claims by a Nigerian medical doctor to have developed both a cure and a vaccine for AIDS and HIV, state radio said on Monday.

Radio Nigeria said Minister of Health Timothy Menakaya gave the directive for the evaluation of the claims of Dr Jeremiah Abalaka, an immunologist and director of Medicrest Hospital in the country’s capital, Abuja.

“The letter which was delivered by the chairman of the committee, Professor Geofrey Onyemelukwe, also requested Dr Abalaka to work with members of the committee by providing them with protocols for the clinical evaluation,” the radio said.

It added that Abalaka was also expected to cooperate in handling any side-effects that might become manifest in the process of administering the therapy.

Abalaka has claimed that dozens of people whom he treated were found to be HIV-free when they went back to the very hospitals where they had originally been diagnosed as AIDS patients. He also said the vaccines he developed successfully prevented infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The health minister had in November announced the decision to undertake the verification among measures to halt the rapid spread of the virus now estimated to have infected over five million of the more than 108 million Nigerians.