Gambian Aids sufferers demand justice after discovering former president’s ‘miracle cure’ did nothing

The president had found a cure for Aids. That was the news that reached Ousman Sowe, the head of a Gambian Aids support network, one day in 2007. He was overjoyed.

“We all went with the hope that we were going to take a drop of some wonderful medication and be cured,” Sowe, 64, a tall man with greying hair, said in an office outside Gambia’s rundown seaside capital.

But he was not allowed to go home after showing up at the state house that day. Gambia’s ex-president Yahya Jammeh forced him to drink herbal concoctions morning and night for seven months until he was declared cured – but in reality, near death.

Jammeh, whose 22-year rule over the tiny West African country was marked by accusations of human rights abuses, fled into exile last year after losing an election.

Now survivors of Jammeh’s bogus Aids treatment are doing what once seemed impossible – speaking out about their suffering and pursuing justice against the man who endangered their lives.

An estimated 9,000 Gambians, most with HIV, passed through Jammeh’s treatment programmes and were forced to give up conventional medicine in favour of his home-made cures, said Aids-Free World, a US-based charity working with survivors.