Kampala’s bogus drug that ‘cures’ all ailments

By Annet Kasiima | 5yrs ago | 3 min read

In the New Year 2019, I am going to fight one battle and I will not relent until it has reached a logical conclusion - victory for my side. I am waging a legal battle against Uganda’s National Drug Authority for failing to rein in all those conmen selling magical cures in Kampala, putting the lives of millions of women at risk.

Most of the dawa being sold by these conmen and unfortunately, some con women, are targeting women in their womanhood or as mothers for their children. The NDA has no excuse whatsoever for not cracking down on these illegal and deceitful medicine sellers because they are right in Kampala city.

So even if the office did not have the notorious logistics, NDA officials can walk to the 100 trading centres in and around Kampala and ask the nearest policemen to apprehend these killers.

If you haven’t been to Kampala then you are lucky you have not been accosted by these people who sell a single tablet that cures everything that comes to their evil minds. Again if you haven’t been to Uganda, your conceptual image of a tablet is a small round pill from a branded packet or a blister pack.

Well, here we still see original tablets as used by early man before modern factories and industrial chemists started making tablets more convenient and friendly to the handler. The tablet I am talking about is about half a kilogramme in weight, shaped like a big sausage and made of very hard clay.

You administer its contents by rubbing it in the rough interior of a broken side of a clay port containing a little water. That way, the chemical contents dissolve in the water and you drink it. That is how our great-great-great-great grandparents administered medicine.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying this form of tablet is bad.

What I am going to fight with all my strength are these conmen and women who claim these rather vulgar looking tablets can cure everything they can think about.

Pass any trading centre in and around Kampala and you will hear them in their offensive loudspeakers calling women to go and buy the special tablet that will cure candida, dryness, painful menstruation, increase breast milk and give you a beautiful figure.

They also claim it makes your man stick with you forever and never look at another woman, make your skin soft help you deliver babies smoothly and painlessly, make your baby strong and healthy, cure baby’s colic pains, eliminate all forms of cough plus anything that the person taking in the crackling loudspeaker can think of.

Come to think of it, If NDA doesn’t have the capacity to test these concoctions to prove they are fraudulent, they could still ask police to arrest them for noise pollution. Either way, they would protect the people from their con medicine.

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