MAUN: 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 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. The service, which is free thanks to donations from the project's supporters in the UK, is provided by two volunteer homeopaths she recruits from the UK to spend three months at a time in Maun. Many of the project's patients are now taking ARV medication, but report that the homeopathic remedies help them deal with the sometimes unpleasant side effects as well as opportunistic infections and depression, and improve general wellness. "It's been really welcomed," Fairclough told IRIN/PlusNews. "People have been very open. I think they feel supported by us because we listen, but I believe the medicines also really help people."
