. • Dr Tian Shengxun shows the launched herbal HIV drugs in his office.

By CHARLES SIMENGWA –
THE increased recognition of herbal medicine in the management of HIV/AIDS patients has proved to be crucial in the last decade.
As some medical experts rightly observed, when Nelson Mandela addressed 12,000 participants at the eighth International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, in July 2000, no one knew what the future held for the AIDS response.
Access to lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs in 2000 was sharply limited, and donor spending on AIDS activities amounted only to a small fraction of current funding levels.
However, there is a whole new approach to matters of HIV/AIDS in view of the linkages which have been forged between conventional and herbal medicine administrators.
These are the efforts that even give the theme for the 2016 World AIDS Day, which is ‘Hands Up for #HIV Prevention’, a deeper meaning.
According to the AIDS by the numbers 2016 report from UNAIDS, 1.1 million people worldwide died of AIDS-related illnesses in 2015.
By the end of last year, an estimated 36.7 million people around the world were living with HIV.
Additionally, UNAIDS estimates that from 2002 to 2012, expanded access to HIV treatment averted 4.2 million deaths globally and contributed to a 58 per cent reduction in new HIV infections.
However, many of the obstacles that impeded effective HIV prevention and treatment programmes in 2000 still exist today.
More than 60 per cent of people living with HIV remain without anti-retroviral therapy. They include women and girls, men who have sex with men, transgender people, sex workers, and young people.
In Africa, Chinese herbal drugs have continued to gain prominence, the evidence being the Tian Immunity Booster, commonly known as TIB, which is an extraction of different plant herbs packaged in tablet form.
Studies conducted on TIB by Josef Schneider at Freiburg University in Germany, and similar studies by Peter Nara of Biological Mimetics Inc in Maryland State, in the United States of America, showed that the drug could block and inhibit the replication of HIV.
Other laboratory tests have been carried out in the United Kingdom and Japan, with amazing scientific results. For example one of four TIBs tested is 100 per cent inhibiting the replication of HIV.
TIB is manufactured through modern technology as proper compounds extracted from more than 30 different pure Chinese herbs.
It has multiple targets and powerful anti-viral and anti-bacteria functions. Therefore, it can handle most of the opportunistic infections (OPIs) linked to lower immunity or HIV/AIDS.
TIB products are fusion inhibitors killing the HIV virus at the very beginning of infection. TIB blocks the fusion taking place between the HIV and CD4 cells, which means that it can stop HIV from infecting CD4 cells then HIV Virus automatically dies within 72 hours in the blood.
TIB has been registered by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board under the Ministry of Health in Kenya.
Positive testimonies by some Kenyans attest to the growing popularity of TIB both in East Africa and other countries such as Zambia, where the developer of the herbal drugs, Tian Shengxun opened the first Chinese clinic in Lusaka in 1993.
“I used your Tian products sometime around 2012, 2013. My husband (who was also HIV-positive) used TIB for six months.”
“We haven’t taken conventional ARVs five years after stopping the TIB products,” one patient in Kenya told Professor Tian in October, this year.
The drug treats more complicated illnesses like cancer, anaemia, tuberculosis (TB), fibroid, heart or liver and kidney problems.
There are four different sugar-coated TIB tablets which contain more than 30 different Chinese herbs.
TIB therapy has been confirmed with multiple functions, which include boosting immunity as the proper natural booster, stimulating the bone marrow as a blood activator, and treating and preventing bacterial infections being natural wide-spectrum antibiotics.It also treats viral diseases as it is natural wide-spectrum anti-viral drugs with multiple targets.
“Apart from TIB being the pure herbal product with wide brand anti-virus and anti-bacteria, at the same time most importantly, it can activate the bone marrow to produce more blood to enhance the human being immunity.
“For sure, TIBs can harmonise the main organs to make the immune system stronger to kill the cancer cells. Particularly, TIB can reduce the toxicity and side-effects of chemotherapy for cancer or AIDS known as super cancer,” Prof Tian said in an interview from Nairobi, ahead of this year’s World AIDS Day.
He said TIB products had been scientifically confirmed non-toxic and clinically used in Africa for more than 25 years.
As TB patients are usually co-infected with HIV, it has been clinically observed that TIB can treat TB and HIV co-infection patients very effectively.
The latest TIB anti-HIV activity assay (or evaluation) was done in early 2016 at Namibia University.
The one confirmed TIB study result was against HIV-1 reverse transcriptase enzyme inhibitor (RI).
Other preliminary results of a more sensitive study against HIV-1 protease enzyme were satisfactory as protease enzyme inhibitor, and have been subjected to a re-confirmatory study.
Prof Tian said the assessment indicated that TIBs have multiple anti-retroviral functions, and are not life-time drugs.
“Conventional ARVs should be taken for a life time. At the same time, drug resistance is easily produced during medication, but TIB Herbal ARV products are not.
“Commonly, six months or so is advised as the minimum course. The TIB therapy can be resumed any time whenever is necessary, and it still works properly,” he said.
Prof Tian said the most unique and key points of TIB herbal products are of, fusion inhibitor, enzyme inhibitor and, real human being immunity booster functions.
“That’s why TIB drugs can result in functional cure, meaning not life treatment, and living in a healthy condition. For example, there is one typical functional cure case in Zambia.
“This particular patient has been on functional cure for more than 15 years already from full blown AIDS stage, and has never been on conventional ARVs. There are many patients from Zambia and Kenya who are physically healthy after more than 10 years of TIB treatment,” he said.
From the performance of TIB for more than two decades, it is evident that the management of AIDS patients needs a multi-faceted approach, and that is what gives a fresher meaning to the World AIDS Day.