Burglars 'peed' on Aids records
2005-05-30 22:53
Special Report
The South African government has announced a joint venture to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral drugs with a Swiss company.
Cape Town - A former nurse who treats Aids patients with lemon juice, garlic and olive oil has no record of about 40 000 people she claims she has treated "because burglars peed on the records three years ago".
This was the response Tine van der Maas, 51, offered when asked about the medical records of the people she has allegedly treated with her diet - backed by the health minister - of garlic, beetroot, olive oil, lemon and the African potato.
She uses the same diet for people with epilepsy, diabetes, cancer, depression, asthma, ulcers, cataracts, high cholesterol and glandular fever.
In a document obtained by Die Burger, Van der Maas said she "doesn't know where her patients live".
"If you don't hear from your patients, they are
usually doing well. If it's not going well, they'll phone," reads the document.
'Gives people false hope'
Nathan Geffen of the Treatment Action Campaign said Van der Maas's treatment had not been clinically tested or approved.
Geffen said it was unethical for a person to claim to have cured so many ill people with a treatment that had not been clinically tested.
"It gives people false hope. The fact that it's being said that if one doesn't hear from the patient, it's going well - I mean, that says everything."
He said there were many people who made allegations about the treatment of HIV/Aids and the government was not sending a clear message that it should be approached in the right way.
Van der Maas has the support of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and said the minister had asked her to treat patients with diet supplements.
She denied she was receiving any remuneration for the treatment, but acknowledged that her and her mother's expenses were being covered.
It is understood the treatment is being offered in hospitals and clinics in five provinces.
Van der Maas said: "The minister saw that the treatment was working, but we are being crushed as quacks.
"But if that had been the case, we would have been exposed and
disappeared from the scene.
"As it is, we return with gusto every time we've
been criticised," she said.
She didn't want to say whether she and Tshabala-Msimang were friends.
'Repairs the biochemistry'
"We have a good relationship. She supports me. But we're not sitting down to tea. What is personal will remain personal," said Van der Maas.
She said one substance could help with so many illnesses because it detoxified the body and repaired the biochemistry. Thereafter, the body repaired itself.
Later, she said she did have the records of 400 people she treated for the production of a documentary programme last year.
In the meantime, the Democratic Alliance has announced that it will ask the Medicines Control Council to look into the legality of her diet supplement plan.
- Die Burger