Jammeh’s victim of fake HIV/AIDS treatment: My baby was forced to drink concoction

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By LAMIN SANYANG

Fatou Jatta was one of the first batches of patients that were made to undergo former President Yahya Jammeh’s sham treatment for HIV/AIDS.

In the early 2000, the Gambia’s former dictator surprised the world when he announced that he had invented a cure for the deadly virus.

Jammeh allegedly forced this victim with other patients to give up their medicines and enroll in a sham treatment program under his personal care.

“We were forced to undergo a sham treatment which was very hard for us and our families. We all know how Jammeh could use force on people,” Fatou Jatta said.

She explained the humiliation that they have suffered in the hands of the former head of state cum ‘witch doctor’.

Fatou said the 9-month treatment was a detention during which their families were not allow to see them.

“We had to undress completely naked and be massaged by Jammeh himself with a team of doctors,” she said.

What was so embarrassing to her was having them undressed and laid before the former head of state with his team rubbing parts of their bodies including their private parts.

“I feel like dying than to face the general public,” her voice trembles.

Fatou almost cried when she started narrating the ordeal of her little baby who was one and a half year old at the time, saying the child was forced to drink concoction.

“That was so unfair to force an innocent child to drink concoction.”

Jatta who called herself a survivor said she was subjected to so many hard things but was grateful to God that she survived it and telling her story.

She urged her colleagues to stop calling themselves as victims and start to see themselves as ‘survivors’, while appealing to Gambians to see them as family.