they can be going to [the] toilet every five minutes". All of which would be amusing if Africa were not suffering an Aids epidemic, doctors not continually battling traditional healers and their herbal remedies.

By African standards, Gambia has a low level of Aids infection - just over two per cent of the population - but that is no reason to tolerate bad science. Neighbouring Senegal has done better in combating the virus (0.9 per cent infection); they worry that Jammeh's ideas might spread.

"The Gambian leader requires patients to cease their anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), a move that risks weakening their immune systems and making them even more prone to infection," said Dr Antonio Filipe, head of the World Health Organisation in Senegal.

Jammeh counters that the ARVs - "some $400 per tablet" - are a conspiracy by western drugs

Having drunk a bitter herbal concoction, patients are advised to station themselves near a lavatory

companies: only "the three most ineffective are sent to Africa and Asia", he says, and his discovery "has startled the international drug cartels and their collaborators".

But the Senegalese hospital contracted to handle the test results of Jammeh's nine "recovered" patients has rubbished his conclusions. "There's no baseline," says Dr Coumba-Toure Kane. "You can't prove someone has been cured of Aids from just one data point. It's dishonest of Gambia's government to use our results in this way."

Jammeh retaliates: "There are bound to be sceptics. Mine is not an argument, mine is a proof... I can cure Aids and I will."

If Jammeh has found a cure for Aids, he must share the secret with mankind - and update his CV where, under Special Skills, it says he can cure epilepsy and asthma, but nothing about Aids.