Kasubi-based herbalist David Ssenfuka has suspended cancer treatment effective Monday this week, citing frustration and sabotage.
In a press conference, Ssenfuka said that he, and the professional medical workers he has partnered with on cancer and diabetes research, have been receiving threats from the Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI) compelling him to reveal contents of his concoction or stop dispensing the medicine altogether.
In addition, he said, the laboratories he has been using to test samples before making treatment decisions have started rejecting referrals from his Leonia NNN Medical Research and Diagnostics Centre, leaving him with no option but consider seeking help from outside the country.
He says that he has now written to Rwanda, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia seeking help to have his innovation developed since efforts to formalize his herbal treatments and translate them into medicine that is internationally acceptable in Uganda are dragging on forever.
Until yesterday, Ssenfuka’s herbal medicine for both cancer and diabetes were regarded at community use status. No clinical trials have been done to establish their safety and efficacy in humans, although recent studies done on mice by the Natural Chemotherapeutics Institute showed that they have some curative properties.
While he will continue monitoring those that he has already given the herbs to, going forward, Ssenfuka says they will not be enrolling any more patients until government clearence or when human clinical trials eventually begin since efforts to have emergency use approvals like it was for COVID-19 therapies like Covidex or any help with quickening the research process have failed.
Ssenfuka showed the media a letter he allegedly wrote to the cancer institute on March 12, 2020, explaining to them how he was dispensing medicine at a rudimentary stage without any scientific guidelines in terms of dosage and preservatives. By that time, he wrote to the institute calling for help with scientific expertise and advice, he says he had administered the herb to 37 patients who had been officially referred by UCI for palliative care. He says by then, he was not charging patients any money because of the negative attitude towards herbal medicine and the scientific declaration that cancer is an incurable disease.
But with more positive testimonies from his earlier patients, more and more people have been flooding his centre seeking treatment. To date, he says he has never received any form of response from the national cancer referral and research center.
But officials at UCI said they have never heard from Ssenfuka and don’t have any dealings with him. Instead, Christine Namulindwa, the public relations officer referred the reporter to the National Drug Authority (NDA). NDA PRO Abias Rwamwiri said Ssenfuka’s team was guided three weeks ago on what they require to start doing clinical trials in order to pave way for approvals to do large scale production.
Rwamwiri clarified that the entity never stopped him from seeing patients under the arrangement the herbalist is using now. Meanwhile, on Friday as Uganda joined the rest of the world to mark Cancer Day, Dr Nixon Niyonzima who heads the research division at UCI said that a lot of their patients are taking herbal remedies alongside their prescribed chemotherapy.
He says they are seeing this from the toxicity tests that they conduct. He made an appeal to government to help herbalists like Ssenfuka develop their medicines to levels where the dosage is known and the level of toxicity expected.
