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Medication is part of the healing process that God avails to us, says Rev Mabizela

It appears the gains made in the last decade to have the HIV prevalence rate reduced from as high as 26 percent in 2000, scaling down to 18 percent in 2006 and 15 percent in 2011 will be eroded if nothing is done to the new “gospel” preachers who are persuading people on life-long medication to stop taking drugs.
The preachers who are over-zealous pray for the sick at church sermons and tell the congregants that if after three sessions one is still taking medication then one is not a strong believer.

I attended one such service in Avondale where a youthful preacher held a healing session towards the end of the church service. The preacher invited the sick and anyone with problems to come forward and kneel down before he laid his hands on them.

Surely, people have problems and many people knelt before him and he prayed for each and everyone. He asked anyone with an ailment to touch the specific place which caused the problem and by that touch and his prayer they were healed.

“By the power of the prayer I have just said and by your faith if you were on any medication that is life-long, it is now a thing of the past. By your faith you are healed. I am surprised to see the same faces kneeling before me week-after-week. If you have been kneeling before me for three weeks and are not yet healed then you are a man of little faith.

“Just one session and your faith can move mountains and you are healed. If you were taking tablets for high blood pressure go and flush them down the toilet. If you were injecting yourself because of diabetes then kiss the devil goodbye. If you have been diagnosed as HIV positive, tell the devil that he has no place in your blood. Go and stop taking that medication if you have the faith. By your faith you are healed. I am sick and tired of praying for people of little faith. Those who have been healed say hallelujah,” he said this to a thunderous “hallelujah” from the congregants.

I was surely shocked. I pray that any medication that I take for life have limited or no severe side effects. I pray that I adhere to the doctors’ instructions as I take my daily doses. I pray that I see God’s hand as he gives me more years with the help of medication.

I do not pray that one day I wake up and see that HIV has been flushed from my system. By now with medication my viral load is undetectable so were I to take an HIV test it would show that I do not have any detectable virus.

This can be the case with many people on ART who after healing go to take an HIV test. Many people who have been on anti-retroviral therapy know that their viral load is now undetectable but that does not mean they are now HIV negative. One such person who has been on ART since 2009 and now has an undetectable viral load is Olive Mtabeni, the founder of Life Support Empowerment Organisation.
“I have had an undetectable viral load for the past year all thanks to the medication and adherence that I stick too. It is not that I am no longer HIV positive but just that the virus is so tiny that it is no longer picked by the test,” said Mtabeni.

She was worried that there were Pentecostal and Apostolic sects, which now pushed people to the wall and thereby stopping them from taking medication.

Mtabeni is sad that only last week they lost a man who lived in the neighbourhood after his church ordered him to stop taking ARVs.
“A woman who lives in Chitungwiza in my neighbourhood came to my home last month and was deeply worried that her husband had stopped taking ARVs after a prophet at his church told him that he was cured of HIV. The couple was on medication and the wife had gone to the rural areas where they are building a homestead. The wife was shocked on return to find that her husband had deteriorated and she inquired what the problem was. She found out that the husband continued collecting tablets from the clinic but had stopped taking them. He now had a plastic bag full of tablets,” said Mtabeni.

With the man collecting his medication, his card read that he was up to date on medication and even the hospital staff was worried what the cause of his deterioration was.

“The wife was told of Leso and she brought the cards and tablets to me where she said her husband had stopped taking ARVs. I accompanied her to the clinic where she opened up that her husband had defaulted. This explained the man’s failing health. A CD4 count was done and he was counselled again. Unfortunately, he died before the results of the CD4 count were out. That is the new gravity of churches telling patients to stop medication which we now face,” said Mtabeni.

A woman from Hatfield who works as a house help in my neighbourhood also missed death by a whisker.
Although I did not know that she was on ART, the last time I saw her she had turned pitch black and had pimples all over her chest and face. This prompted me to ask on her health. I enquired what her problem was and asked if she had sought medical attention to which she replied that she had defaulted on taking ARVs.

The woman, who was Catholic for years, said her sister–in-law asked her to change denomination and took her to a church where she attended healing school for eight days.

“I changed churches and was now going to my sister-in-law’s church where I was taken to healing school. For eight days I was at the school and was convinced that I was healed and had to stop taking medication. I believed it because it was so convincing. I stopped taking ARVs in December last year. I fell ill in August this year and was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

“I am now feeling much better and am on TB treatment and have been moved to second line treatment for HIV. I was told that if I were to default again I may not be lucky as third line medication is not readily available and is expensive,” she said.

She was, however, worried because many people who had attended the healing school were chronic patients and she feared that they too stopped medication on completing the healing school session.

Rev Phumzile Mabizela, the executive director for International Network of Religious Leaders – Lay and Ordained Living with or Personally Affected with HIV, spoke against such teachings on the sidelines of the World Council of Churches Congress taking place in Busang, South Korea, this week.

“Medication is a gift from God. It is rather irresponsible to encourage people to stop taking medication for chronic illness. Medication is part of the healing process that God avails to us. Most of these leaders surprisingly take their diabetes and high blood pressure medication in private,” said Rev Mabizela.

“We must challenge church leaders who understand the importance of the healing discourse within their churches to speak out against such destructive teaching.”

Defaulting is now a major challenge as moving patients onto second line medication in the case of HIV drugs is very expensive.
First line drugs cost between US$10 to US$15 depending on the type but for the second line medication the cost is ten times more. Government has  600 000 people on the assisted ARVs programme with the same number waiting to be initiated. With more people now defaulting this puts a strain on the Government free ART programme.

In an interview recently, National Aids Council monitoring and evaluation director Mr Amon Mpofu said 4 683 women were on second line ARVs. He said although the number of people resistant to ARVs had decreased from 8 739 to 8 560 in the last quarter of 2012 the statistics for children and women was increasing.

“For the first quarter of 2013, there were 608 children, 4 683 women and 3 2 69 men who were resistant to ARVs. The number has, however, gone down to  8 560 in total,” he said.

The main cause of drug resistant is not keeping a proper adherence record. For some it could be that the regimen is not compatible with the patient.

There is a knowledge deficit in church leaders who preach healing by stopping medication and stakeholders in the HIV field have to map out strategies to address the problem which if left unattended will erode the gains made in reducing new HIV infections and getting to zero Aids- related deaths.

The Bible says my people perish for lack of knowledge and this seems so true in some of the churches today.

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