Prophet and Ministry clash over HIV-Positive family

Boniface Keakabetse | Monday July 7, 2014 07:00

 

Nthebolang recently instructed the Health officials to remove two congregates from the Antiretroviral (ARV) programme stating that the woman and her child had been healed by prayer. In March, Nthebolang made news after revelations that she told an HIV afflicted mother and her 10-year old son to stop taking ARVs as God had healed them from the disease. 

The issue became contentious and flared into a public health concern, which involved District Health Management Team, the police and social workers. District authorities ruled that tests must be conducted to check the HIV status of the family and the results proved the family was still HIV positive.  However, Nthebolang stood her ground insisting that testing was against God’s will and was tantamount to challenging the power of God to heal. Social workers had to be firm and it was explained to the prophet and her followers that the state has powers to protect the child by putting him on medication. But the mother continued without taking the drugs to date. In a statement to The Monitor recently, Nthebolang insisted that the child has been healed. She said tests conducted on the minor proved that he has a CD4 count or white blood cells of more than 850 from 295 at the time she prayed for the family. She added that no HIV positive person could have a count of more than 850.

“The health authorities are just afraid to come out into the open and acknowledge that the boy has been healed by the power of God,” she said.

“They are still giving the boy ARVs even when they know he is healed because if they stop that will tell Batswana that they are wrong to say HIV/AIDS has no cure. God will prove them wrong,” she said. District Health Team coordinator Dr Christopher Chembe rubbished Nthebolang’s statement. Chembe told The Monitor that it was not true that they ignore the power of God to cure HIV/AIDS. “All we are saying is that if a person has been healed their status has to be negative. In this case the boy and his mother are still HIV positive. So we cannot say they have been healed,” he said.

Chembe explained that contrary to the prophet’s assertion, the higher CD4 count could be because the boy is on medication. 

“When a person starts taking ARVs the CD4 count improves and it is not true it cannot go up to 850,” Chembe said. He worried that there is an increasing number of pastors misleading people into believing that they had been healed of HIV/AIDS, thus putting them in danger.

Chembe said they would be hosting a meeting with all the pastors to iron out some of the differences around HIV/AIDS.