Nigerians turn to faith healers as HIV aid dries up

[KANO, SciDev.Net] Aisha* once relied on free antiretroviral therapy (ART) from a clinic in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, funded through the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) programme. The treatment kept her HIV suppressed.

That changed when US President Donald Trump ordered a halt to PEPFAR funding in January 2025.

“When I went to the facility and was told the drugs were no longer available for free, my heart sank because I couldn’t afford to pay for them out of pocket,” Aisha told SciDev.Net.

“I believed that because the medicine was rooted in religious scripture, it couldn’t fail me. I thought it’s a permanent way out since the clinics have nothing left to give out for free. ”

‘Aisha’, HIV patient, Maiduguri, Nigeria

Although PEPFAR partially resumed its activities in February 2025, the programme was subject to significant budget cuts. A study by AIDS research foundation amfAR found that at least 1,714 HIV service sites globally closed entirely after terminated or delayed PEPFAR payments and almost none could replace lost funding.

Facing donor stockouts and financial barriers, Aishia and other HIV patients across northern Nigeria, Niger and Chad have been abandoning proven ART for unregulated alternatives marketed locally under the guise of so-called “Islamic medicine”, SciDev.Net reporting found.

“When someone talked to me about a traditional healer whose medicine could cure the virus permanently after just one treatment, I decided to sell my household furniture to buy it,” explained Aisha, recalling the healer’s unfounded claims.

Her desperation reflects a growing trend across northern Nigerian urban centres such as Kano, Bauchi, Gombe and Maiduguri, where alternative health practitioners are filling the treatment void left by the funding cuts.

Operating through offline community networks and social media channels, some of these practitioners market herbal concoctions, promising a total cure in a few months through a one-off purchase of their products.

“I thought it would be a sacrifice that would save my life and my pockets once and for all,” Aisha told SciDev.Net.

Globally, PEPFAR has invested over US$100 billion in the fight against HIV/AIDS since 2003, supporting antiretroviral treatment for more than 20 million people in over 50 countries.

In Nigeria, PEPFAR has disbursed over US$7.8 billion to provide more than 1.9 million people with access to ART, in a country with the fourth-largest HIV burden globally after South Africa, Mozambique and India.

But the US aid freezes created an opportunity for healers pedalling untested treatments.

‘Cure’ claims

In Kano, Yusuf Muhammad Sufi, a traditional healer popularly known as Sarkin Lakanin Jihar Kano, claims his products, which he sells for N45,000 (US$33) for HIV treatment and up to N250,000 (US$183) for advanced AIDS regimens, have “cured” most of the patients who used them.

Similarly, Abdullahi Yunus Umar, who runs the Kashful Aleel Islamic Medicine Centre, operating in Kano and Borno states, says his remedies have reportedly “cured” people living with HIV across Sokoto, Kano, Bauchi and Maiduguri, something even modern medicine has not yet achieved.

Abubakar Ibrahim, senior registrar in the Department of Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease Unit at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, told SciDev.Net that “scientifically, there’s no cure to HIV using medication. The ART we use in Nigeria cannot cure HIV”.

ART prevents HIV from multiplying, or making copies of itself, which reduces the amount of the virus (the viral load) in the body. This gives the immune system a chance to recover and produce more CD4-T cells, which fight infection.

“The ART only suppresses the viral load to undetectable levels to prevent it from circulating in the body,” Ibrahim explained.

Remedies like those promoted by Umar and Sufi are often promoted within a religious context. Practitioners often cite a Hadith (a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, considered a source of Islamic teaching alongside the Quran) that they interpret as meaning God created no disease without also creating its cure.

In predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria, invoking this teaching can make their claims more persuasive to patients.

“I believed that because the medicine was rooted in religious scripture, it couldn’t fail me,” said Aisha. “I thought it’s a permanent way out since the clinics have nothing left to give out for free.”

‘Act of deception’

Research on therapeutic choices in Kano show how passages from classical texts on prophetic medicine are cited by both traditional healers and patients.

Mainstream Islamic scholars strongly insist that this is a form of commercial exploitation of the Islamic texts.

“Selling ineffective remedies that don’t perform the functions claimed is an act of deception strictly forbidden by Allah,” explains Muhammad Mahmud Mustapha, an Islamic scholar based in Kano.

“Anyone who falls victim to this fraud has a religious right to demand accountability for their stolen wealth and their endangered health.”

Mustapha stressed that the Hadith used by these healers is a mandate for formal scientific research, not a license for unregulated commercialism.

He added: “There is a big difference between the existence of a cure in nature and the human knowledge of where that cure is.

“So, the tradition (Hadith) is an encouragement directed specifically at authorised medical researchers recognised by public health authorities to persist in scientific inquiry, but not a justification for individuals to claim they possess a cure that modern science has yet to verify.”

Aisha, who saw no improvement in her health after relying on the herbal remedies for two months, said her symptoms began to return, with her body growing weaker.

“I realised I had spent everything I owned on empty promises while the virus was multiplying inside me,” she said.

Now, she faces the added burden of paying out of pocket for consultations, routine viral load tests and clinic administration fees, expenses that used to be fully covered.

*Real name withheld to protect anonymity.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.