A NUMBER of Zimbabweans in London, who are HIV positive, have died after they stopped taking lifes-aving drugs on the advice of their Evangelical Christian pastors.
Pastors have taken advantage of the respect they get from the church members and have started abusing their faith by claiming to be able to heal AIDS-related diseases.
It sounds like a very old story, but it is actually very painful.
Cecilia Marange died of HIV/AIDS-related illnesses after a pastor in her evangelical Pentecostal Church told her that she had been healed of the HIV virus. She was asked to bring all her medication and bin it in front of the shocked congregants as a show of faith.
The evil pastors have the verses to support their bloodletting
The churches compete to be recognised and they take it a step further and claim to have powers to heal people with HIV.
Angela Matapi (not her real name) passed on after a well-known Zimbabwean pastor in the UK claimed that she had been healed and she could dump her medication.
What makes it so sad is that Angie was a nurse by profession. The pastor made sure he took all her earnings and savings before abandoning her in her last few days.
One wonders why people are so gullible. They are in the medical field and yet they are fooled by a Grade One dropout who claims to have holy fire.
“Why is God silent while his people are killed,” asked Shanduka with pain in his eyes.
Many Zimbabweans have died after attending churches in London where they were encouraged to stop taking the anti-retroviral drugs in the belief that God would heal them and their friends, a leading HIV doctor said.
Responding to the BBC London investigation, Lord Fowler, the former Health Minister responsible for the famous Aids awareness campaign of the 1980s, condemned the practice.
“It’s just wrong, bad advice that should be confronted,” said the Tory Peer, who chaired 2011 House of Lords committee on HIV.
Elias Masakadza (48) from Newham, East London, described one case, saying: “I know of a friend who had been to a pastor. She told her to stop taking her medication, that God is a healer and has healed her.
“This lady believed it. She stopped taking her medication. She passed away,” said Masakadza.
BBC London spoke to a second woman from East London who told of a friend who died after taking advice from her pastor who told her to stop taking her anti-retroviral drugs.
Meanwhile, the director of a leading HIV research centre in East London said she had dealt with a separate case in which a person who was HIV positive died as a result of advice from a pastor.
“I’ve only seen that once, but it has happened,” said Prof Jane Anderson, director of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Health and HIV, in Hackney.
“We see patients quite often who will come having expressed the belief that if they pray frequently enough, their HIV will somehow be cured,” she added.
“We have seen people who choose not to take the tablets at all.”
Lord Fowler condemned pastors giving this advice, saying: “It’s dangerous to the public and dangerous in terms of public health.”
“It’s irresponsible,” he said, suggesting pastors should instead “come off the air on it, look at things much more seriously, and not give this completely wrong advice to the public.”
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