Nana Kofi Drobo – the Ghanaian traditional healer. 

Nana Kofi Drobo had got the reputation among his patients as a good traditional healer, well experienced in the use of different herbs. Especially, he was good at treating different inflammatory disorders. He had his clinic in Brong-Ahafo region in the middle west of Ghana. The drugs he used he prepared himself, and probably the mixture he made was a well kept professional secret.

When AIDS appeared as a new disease in Ghana in the middle of the 80-ies some patients came to his clinic for treatment. In some of the clinical signs Drobo had success. The patients recovered weight. Due to the experience Drobo assembled he got better results. Also he noticed it was easier, and he got more sustaining results if the patients came early, i .e. they only had a few clinical signs and yet hadnÕt developed any opportunstic infections. The good rumour about the healer spread and the number of patients increased.

After some reluctance even the Ministry of Health became interested and were about to open up a local facility to monitor the treatment given by Drobo. Of course, there are no statistical record from DroboÕs clinic. Due to lack of money, the patients were not serologically tested, neither before nor after treatment. There is however one case reported from a French patient who went to Ghana for treatment. Before the trip he was HIV-positve and he had started to loose weight. Initially when given treatment he even became infected by malaria, thus he first had to recover from that disease. But after that episode he started to gain weight and he felt healthier. When back in France he was examined HIV-negative.

Even the pharmaceutical companies became interested in the achievements of Kofi Drobo. He was invited to Japan. During his visit there he felt threatened and returned home. Soon after his return to Ghana he was murdered under odd circumstances in the fall of 1992.

Although Kofi Drobo let schoolboys go to the forest to assemble the plants he needed, the decoction he made probably was his own secret, thereby it is hard to get the knowledge back.

My comment: In many African countries similar stories may be heard. The normal response by western scientists is at best: It is unscientific. At worst: It is humbug. According to my own experience after a two year stay in Ghana, the information spread by people to people almost always has a hard kernel of truth. When concerning medical treatment, this way of spreading information was very valuable, because it gave the patient a stronger position. If many patients then gave credit to a special doctor, you could recognize him as skilful. The comparition could well be done to the western world where the patient more or less are in the hands of the big pharmaceuticals and their one-sided information and where the lack of strong patient organizations are more or less absent to check the contents of their advertising. The worst humbug concerning treatment in AIDS so far is achieved by the marketing of AZT, performed by Burroughs-Wellcome.

The text about Kofi Drobo is taken mainly from a Ghanian daily newspaper, but the content has been confirmed by several persons, Ghanaians and visitors who has confirmed the facts. Although Kofi Drobo took his secret with him by his sad death he gives hope for the HIV-infected. Sadly the western medical establishment are too reluctant, where even the western scientific superiority very often just looks down upon results performed by those considered to be the inferior. The last conclusion could well be described as the rasism within science. i am living proof to this.