AS I was driving to the office on Tuesday, August 12, 2014, I listened to a discussion on Radio Phoenix where Mr Howard Maila, the man behind the herbal drug Mailacin used in the treatment of HIV, was asking for Government support towards his Mailacin drug which he said could also cure the deadly Ebola virus.
According to Mr Maila, relatives of a patient suspected to have contracted the Ebola virus, travelled from a West African country where the Ebola virus is currently wreaking havoc to come and meet him here in Zambia.
They explained to him that they suspected that their relative had contracted the Ebola virus because of the symptoms, ie, external and internal bleeding, vomiting and diarrhoea and general body weakness.
Mr Maila gave them the herbal medicine, Mailacin which upon arrival back in their country, administered to the patient who, a few days later recovered and is now well.
This is according to the relatives of the patient who reported back to Mr Maila about the miracle cure of their relative.
I was, however, taken aback when some callers to the programme condemned Mr Maila and branded him a crook.
Some callers were level headed and appealed to the Zambian Government to support Mr Maila so that the drug can be quickly subjected to clinical trials so that if it really works, why not assist our brothers and sisters in West Africa where lives are being lost because there is no known cure for the Ebola virus.
Positive thinking is needed in this age and era when the world is facing all sorts of incurable ailments and when one seems to have a solution, regardless of one’s standing in society, Government should support such initiatives by simply proving that the medicine can work or not through clinical trials rather than just brushing it aside. You never know where a cure of HIV, Ebola, diabetes, hypertension, etc, can come from.
I urge Mr Maila not to ignore detractors but to continue, in his small way, assisting those that believe they can be assisted.
And following my article on microbicides a fortnight ago, I received the following feedback from my good friend Samuel Kumar of Kitwe, an HIV/AIDS activist and counsellor:
After reading your article on microbicides, I would like to help to put this issue into proper perspective.
Microbicides cannot destroy the virus…… this is a very wrong statement…. microbicides are ARV based gel or creams or vaginal ring, that blocks viral replication in the event the cells lining the genital tracts get infected.
Only virus specific antibodies can neutralise and make the virus ineffective and is then killed by cells called nk cells and CD8.
The point is that microbicides do not kill HIV.  In other words no external agents kill HIV, but it’s only our immune system that can actually target a free HIV particle and direct the killing and not ARVs or microbicides.
What microbicides do is to block viral replication in epithelial cells lining genital tracts and thereby preventing the spread of the virus to other cells and this way the cells do not produce new viral particles and the spread is averted.
That is why they are not 100 per cent effective in preventing HIV. There are also several external factors that work against the microbicides such as the ph of the genital fluids.
It’s important to get the right information, especially when we talk of a disease that we are all grappling with.
If you can get this corrected information it will help the readers and journalists like you to access the right information. In summary, HIV is never killed by external agents, but only by our own bodies’ immune mechanism.
In the first place, a virus is not a living pathogen in the strict sense and hence can’t be killed. Only bacteria can be killed.
A virus survives and replicates inside a host cell, but outside it’s simply inactive and harmless. You can only disrupt a virus replication or rupture its membrane rendering it inactive so killing a virus would not be a right terminology.
How microbicides work:
1. Inactivate the pathogen (rupturing the virus outer coat membrane)
2. Create a barrier between pathogen and vulnerable tissue
3. Interfere with fusion of virus to target cell
4. Prevent replication once virus has entered the cell
5. Boost the vagina’s natural defences
Well, thanks Sam for this contribution.
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