Can ayurveda cure AIDS?

A few weeks ago, I read in an article that an ayurvedic doctor had found a cure for AIDS. Ayurvedic medicine is a well accepted health system in Sri Lanka and government and private ayurvedic practitioners are doing a yeoman service to the community. In the ayurvedic system, the disease classification, reasons and origins of the diseases are well documented. With this disease classification they have developed effective treatment and healing methods over a long period of time. The doctor mentioned in the article has dealt with a disease discovered by modern scientific methods and by western medical professionals and other scientists. In such a situation, when this ayurvedic doctor is dealing with HIV/AIDS patients, it is ethical to inform and interact with medical professionals who have diagnosed and are treating such patients.

Otherwise, the facts submitted by this ayurvedic physician are lacking in authenticity and credibility. He has claimed that a blood sample of an HIV/AIDS patient tested at a reputed private hospital after his treatment, turned out to be negative. This is the accepted procedure in Sri Lanka to diagnose a person as HIV positive or infected with HIV/AIDS. Blood samples of people are tested for HIV/AIDS by laboratories in many private hospitals and clinics as well as many government clinics. Once a test is declared positive by these testing centres that test is known as “screening test positive”. In reality, the person may or may not be positive. The next step is for this test to be confirmed as positive. The central laboratory of the National STD/AIDS Control Programme is the only institution which is performing this special test to confirm whether any “positive screening test” is truly positive.

The patient, whom this ayurvedic doctor has mentioned, was confirmed as HIV positive by this laboratory. Therefore, if the patient had been found to be HIV negative after treatment, the test should be confirmed as negative by this laboratory. Unfortunately, this procedure has not been followed.

In fact, when this was mentioned to me by another ayurvedic doctor, I explained to him the correct procedure to be followed. But nothing happened. The negative test was not confirmed by the central laboratory as negative. Therefore, we cannot accept the fact that the HIV-infected person has become HIV negative after ayurvedic treatment.

A few years back another HIV positive person was treated by the same ayurvedic doctor and the patient progressed into AIDS very rapidly. Later his life was saved after very intense treatment by western medical doctors. The ayurvedic doctor who claims he cured a person of HIV mentions that he used three ingredients but keeps the ingredients secret.

If any health person claims and develops a drug which will cure HIV/AIDS, he will be a multimillionaire in US dollars overnight. There are enough pharmaceutical companies which will come forward to buy the patent rights of the drug. Therefore, if the ayurvedic doctor claims he has a cure for HIV/AIDS, it is unwise to miss this great opportunity.

Kulasiri Buddhakorala, M.D.
Team Leader, Comprehensive Care and Treatment
National STD/AIDS Control Programme