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Forging a New Path
Monica da Silva (World Pulse Magazine)

South Africa

GALLERY

CONVERSATION

South Africa is the epicenter of the worldwide HIV/AIDS pandemic, with the highest number of people (5.3 million) infected.

I knew that a classic homeopathic approach, which treats patients on an individual basis, would be effective for a single individual treatment, but for a country with so many people infected, a broad-spectrum clinical approach was needed. A journal article discussing the clinically proven use of homeopathically prepared growth factors for treating HIV/AIDS in the U.S. by Dr. Barbara Brewitt was influential. Dr. Brewitt agreed to collaborate with me and the University of Johannesburg.

My objectives were to see if this homeopathic growth factor treatment could: 1) increase functional immunity, 2) reverse growth failure, a characteristic feature in HIV-infected children, 3) show similar treatment trends to antiretroviral drugs, 4) be beneficial during each stage of HIV/AIDS progression, and 5) be as effective in South Africa, where a large portion of the country lives in third-world conditions.

I thought that with South Africa’s high infection rate, recruitment of children for the clinical trial would be easy. It wasn’t. I was faced with the prejudices of conventional doctors in Johannesburg towards homeopathy, and this brought me to an area called Finetown, a large informal settlement 35 km south. People there live in squatter conditions.

It took three difficult months to recruit 30 children. This time, it was about the stigma attached to sufferers living within a community. So many times my heart was ripped open and left raw. I shed many tears.
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