GMO mealie-meal debacle

Dear Editor, HIV/AIDS is truly no longer as subject that needs introduction, save for the truth that it is a medical nuisance and a killer at the same time.

Thanks to medical research which has produced ARVs that are helping to manage the disease and allowing patients to even live their full lives.

It is of course every nation's dream to develop an outright drug to heal HIV and remove people from their daily consumption of ARVs.

I can only imagine the joy it will bring about to the world when the HIV cure is discovered and announced. But oddly, when everyone is busy chasing after the HIV/AIDS cure, Zambia with its own Dr Ludwig Sondashi, has strangely decided to go quiet over this man's local drug which has been reported to completely kill the virus.

And like the biblical story in which Jesus Christ said a prophet has no respect in his home district, speaks true of our Dr Sondashi's findings.

Is it because Dr Sondashi is black and cannot be taken seriously over his healing drug? If indeed he was a white man, Zambia would have been a haven of international patients trooping to Lusaka to acquire this wonder drug.

When some years back Dr Sondashi took his medicine to

South Africa, Pretoria was all in smiles, but he quickly smelt a rat and took the next flight back to Lusaka and the rest is history.

But what shocks me is why have both previous and current governments given SF2OOO a lukewarm reception when reports of its healing powers still linger on the lips of Zambians?

There are some Zambians out there who are ready to swear on their dead uncles and aunts that a visit to Dr Sondashi is all one needs to secure a complete cure of their HIV.

We have a research centre at Ndola Central Hospital which can be easily engaged to pass or indeed fail the SF2OOO. Zambia may have wasted its 24 years of playing hide and seek games over SF2OOO yet the much-sought cure could be lying in her backyard.

It is not too late for the current government to open and pursue the SF2OOO which may surprisingly put Zambia on the world medical map, remembering yet another biblical teaching that says the stone that the builders threw away became the cornerstone of the foundation.