Gambia has
ordered the expulsion of the top U.N. official in the
country after she criticized assertions by President
Yahya Jammeh that he was curing AIDS patients with
herbs, government sources said on Friday.
Fadzai
Gwaradzimba, a Zimbabwean national who is the resident
coordinator of U.N. operations in the tiny West
African state, was given 48 hours to leave the
country, the sources, who asked not to be named, told
Reuters.
Gwaradzimba's
office in Gambia declined to comment.
Jammeh, a former
wrestler and army officer who has ruled the
predominantly Islamic country since seizing power in a 1994
coup, says he has found a natural herbal cure for
patients infected with HIV/AIDS.
The Gambian
president has been giving regular treatment sessions at a
local hospital in which, carrying a Koran and prayer beads,
he rubs patients' bodies with herb pastes and also
gives them herbal potions.
The sessions,
widely broadcast by Gambian state media, have been reported
by international media, which have quoted world health
experts as casting doubt on Jammeh's claim to be able
to cure AIDS.
In a report on
Jammeh's treatment sessions earlier this week, Britain's
Sky News quoted Gwaradzimba as saying that claims of cures
for AIDS could encourage sufferers of the disease to
engage in risky behavior and make the AIDS problem in
Africa worse.
Jammeh has
dismissed the skepticism and insists the cure works.
(Reuters)