Prof Obel Announces Discovery of AIDS Drug

In an exclusive interview in Mombasa on Thursday, the Kenyan scientist Arthur Obel announced that he had yet again, discovered a new drug for treating HIVdefine positivedefine people. He claimed that his new drug named OSCean could reduce an infected person’s viral load to zero.

Prof Obel said “The drug shall be launched on the 16th of June in Nairobi, and the initial treatments shall be offered free of charge for as long as the stocks can last,” soon after opening the Third East African Project Management Summit at the Sarova Whitesands.

Obel has been asked by the Medical Services assistant minister Danson Mungatana to immediately take the drug to be tested for efficacy by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board. “This is the procedure that all drugs in our market are expected to follow before they are put on the market,” Mr. Mungatana said.

He further said it was “impossible” at this stage to state whether the newly discovered drug works, until testing was carried out by professionals.

The Aids researcher has come up with four drugs till now, terming each subsequent discovery more potent than the previous one.OSCean is the fourth drug in a row which he has discovered. It comes four years after Compound Q27 and 11 years after Pearl Omega, which was banned by the authorities.

Since March 1, Mr. Obel has been at the center of a medical controversy over an herbal medicine which he discovered and called Pearl Omega which can stop the AIDS virus from reproducing. Many of his medical colleagues say it is just a modern version of snake-oil.

The sales of Pearl Omega have provoked an outcry from several quarters. Some people with AIDS have charged that Mr. Obel's announcement of a "cure" has had a disastrous effect on many Kenyans suffering from the disease, especially the poor and uneducated.

Advocates for AIDS patients say some people are selling their belongings to raise money for the treatment. Others are abandoning safe sexual practices in the mistaken belief that a cure has been found, these advocates say.

Government health officials, meanwhile, have been equivocal about the treatment's efficacy, to say the least.