It is now a month since Gambian president Yahya Jammeh shocked international health campaigners by claiming he had found the cure for Aids.
The original announcement prompted widespread ridicule. But Jammeh remains adamant - and what began as an absurd controversy has now turned serious.
On Sunday, Gambia gave the UN's Resident Coordinator, Dr Fadzai Gwaradzimba, 48 hours to leave the country after she dismissed Jammeh's cure. The expulsion follows the resignations of two officials of Gambia's Aids Secretariat, in protest against Jammeh's paralysing of the nation's anti-Aids campaign.
On Monday, the state-backed Daily Observer heaped kudos on the president, saying his breakthrough cure "is real without any iota of doubt, because the whole process is transparent" - a transparency
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Gambia’s president has expelled a UN doctor for scorning his herbal paste remedy, says
a s h smyth |
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entirely constructed by Gambia's Department of Health.
Jammeh, 41, gained control of Gambia in a 1994 coup. He says it is his secret knowledge of the Koran, combined with the use of herbal medicines, that facilitated the Aids 'breakthrough', and he claims that nine of his patients are now HIV-free.
When performing his treatment, Jammeh closes his eyes in prayer and rubs a green herbal paste on to the ribcage of the patient. He then orders the patient to swallow a bitter yellow drink, followed by two bananas (conveniently abundant in Gambia).
There have been reports of patients left writhing in agony after this presidential treatment. Jammeh himself apparently advises that, after swallowing his concoction, patients "should be kept at a place that has adequate toilet facilities, because 
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