BOTSWANA: People living with HIV turn to homeopathy

MAUN, 21 February 2008 (PlusNews) - The nondescript town of Maun in northern Botswana is often no more than a way-station on the road to the luxury safari camps of the Okavango Delta, a haven for wildlife and one of Africa's most popular tourist destinations.

For Hilary Fairclough, a former nurse from England, a visit to Maun while accompanying her partner on a work trip in 2000, planted the seed of an idea that has brought her back twice a year since then.

She was stunned by the toll HIV/AIDS was taking on the Batswana, at a time when antiretroviral (ARV) drugs had yet to become available in the public health sector, and in 2002 she returned to find out if there was a demand among people living with HIV for her services as a trained homeopath.

Very few homeopaths practice in Botswana, and not many people in Maun had heard of this alternative form of medicine before her arrival, but the Maun Homeopathy Project, as it later became known, has since treated 1,500 HIV-positive people in the area.

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