AFTER MY DISMISSAL AS MINISTER, I WILL CONCENTRATE ON CURING HIV AND AIDS – DR SONDASHI
… My Son’s Illness Led Me to Stumble Upon an HIV/AIDS ‘Cure’
Hey Folks,
Many thanks for your enthusiastic interest in reading about various memorable personalities in my volumes 1 and 2 of the Conversations with Memorable Personalities.
I keep receiving very good feedback and suggestions on other personalities to be featured in my future publication(s), as well as inquiries on some possible personalities I could have covered in the past but not yet featured in my series.
One such name that dominated the inquiries in the last few days is veteran politician and lawyer, Dr. Ludwig Sondashi.
Unfortunately, I did not have the privilege and pleasure to interview Dr. Sondashi for my Profile column during my time at The Post. The last time I spoke with him, according to my recollection, was in January 2005, right after he was fired as Minister of Works and Supply by President Levy Mwanawasa.
So, in lieu of a classic profile conversation, I am sharing this final interview I had with him, which was published in The Post on Sunday, January 23, 2005.
Two weeks earlier, I had contacted Dr. Sondashi for his reaction to the sacking.
His reaction?
“I will now concentrate on administering my HIV and AIDS herbal medicine so I can cure as many people as possible,” he said.
Many people laughed at his statement as one of his usual jokes.
But Dr. Sondashi was not joking, and some people did not consider his statement a laughing matter. As a result, I received several phone calls after my story announced what was to be Dr. Sondashi’s newly found occupation. All the callers asked me how they could reach him for more details on the herb he claimed cured AIDS.
I shared his contact details. One of the callers actually phoned Dr. Sondashi, and the two arranged to meet. They met, and Dr. Sondashi supplied his concoction.
It was at that point that I decided to visit Dr. Sondashi to find out more about his herb, which he had also talked about two years earlier in 2003 when he still served as minister.
“Many people do not believe me when I say I have a cure for AIDS,” Dr. Sondashi said. “But my herbal medicine has demonstrated that it can cure HIV and AIDS. So far, 60 persons have been cured by my medicines. What I do is that when a patient comes to me, I ask them to go for counselling and testing. If they test positive, they come to me and I give them the medicine which I call Sondashi Formulation. Depending on the severity of the disease, the period of healing takes between one day to three months. By the third month, the patient will test negative. I have never come across anyone who has gone beyond three months. It all depends on how people respond.”
At the time, the Sondashi Formulation was in powder form and packed in used 500-gram jam bottles. Sondashi said he had subjected his formulation to a scientific analysis by the National AIDS Council’s Technical Committee on alternative therapy and traditional remedies. The tests, according to Dr. Sondashi, revealed that the formulation was “behaving very well and is non-toxic.”
“Now we are just trying to finalise taking the formulation for clinical trials where I will be allowed to go to the hospital and administer it to patients. The hospital would then be able to monitor how the patient is doing,” he said.
Dr. Sondashi explained how he stumbled upon the formulation through sheer coincidence. He said he originally had no interest in medicines, whether traditional or otherwise, because his doctorate is in law, not medicine.
But circumstances compelled him to develop an interest in traditional medicine, particularly in this formulation. A few years earlier, Dr. Sondashi’s first-born son suffered from HIV and AIDS. As a caring father, he travelled far and wide in search of traditional medicine to mitigate the impact of the disease. For a long time, his efforts proved in vain, until much later when he stumbled on what he then called the Sondashi Formulation.
But it was too late to save his son, who died shortly thereafter. This was circa 2001.
And four years later in 2005, at the time of this conversation, Dr. Sondashi had been working on this formulation, although he refused to tell me where he found the herb.
“That will remain my secret,” he said. “You know this is a very serious issue because some of those who are manufacturing ARVs might not receive this news very well. I can only say that some of the trees in this formulation are only found in Angola.”
The formulation was a combination of more than five trees, some of which Sondashi said could be cultivated. As of January 2005, a 500-gram bottle of the powdered medicine cost K250,000 (the equivalent of K250 after the 2013 currency rebasing).
Dr. Sondashi was so sure about the ‘efficacy’ of his formulation that he was ready to refund any patients who were disappointed with the results, although he noted, “I am yet to come across such a person.”
“A bottle lasts for about 10 days because you have to use one teaspoon three times a day,” he explained. “You just put the powder either in porridge or water. But I’m trying to see if I can put the powder in capsule form. … I’m calling for any medical doctors who are interested to validate my medicine to call me, and I will give them my medicine for them to give to their patients. You know many people do not know that I cure HIV and AIDS. I have got details of the sick persons that I have treated so far, but I can’t give them to you because I have to observe confidentiality.”
Hope you enjoyed my stroll into the past.
Amos Malupenga
Author
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Picture caption: Dr. Ludwig Sondashi displaying bottles of his Sondashi Formulation during the interview in 2005.