Weeks after the Loliondo “miracle cure” burst into the limelight, Kenyans are trooping to his clinic in earnest, using both land and air.
Kenyan air charter firms are reaping from the increasing demand on the Loliondo route where Rev Ambilikile Mwasapile is dispensing his cure.
Airlines are flying patients to Loliondo from various cities and towns in East Africa. While small aircraft are landing at the Waso Airstrip near Loliondo, helicopters are flying directly to the clinic in Samunge Village.
Most planes fly from Arusha, Mwanza, Kilimanjaro and Julius Nyerere airports; others are from neighbouring countries.
Kenyans who cannot afford air travel opt for the Loliondo Hospital Express, a matatu service being offered daily from Ronald Ngala bus terminus in Nairobi.
The bus leaves at 9am daily charging Sh6,000 for a two-way ticket. According to one of the matatu operators on the new route “the more passengers there are, the more matatus we will allocate to the route in any given day”.
Mr Forget Ngowi, 48, travelled to Loliondo at the weekend to sample the drink he believes has mystical healing powers.
He was accompanied by his 36- year-old wife Rehema in search of the wonder drink that has awed East Africans.
“I stood in the three kilometres queue to have my drink,” he told the Nation yesterday after arriving from Loliondo.
Mr Ngowi says he went to Loliondo to partake of the drink as a preventive measure contrary to popular belief that sick people are the only persons travelling to Tanzania. Mr Ngowi plans to take his two daughters to Loliondo when they during the current April school holidays.
Ten aeroplanes
“At least ten planes landed while I was on the queue,” said Mr Ngowi . He also met some Kenyan friends in Loliondo.
However, he says, the exhaustion that comes with queuing is almost unbearable for the ill. He was one of the passengers who boarded the matatu from the Ronald Ngala terminus last Sunday at 11am and arrived in Loliondo at 2pm.
“Unfortunately, Mzee only serves the drink during daytime so we had to wait until morning,” he pointed out.
With the scorching sun sky-high, Mr Ngowi and his wife finally received a serving of the drink at 3pm at a cost of TSh500 (about Sh25) each.
His journey proved painstaking after the matatu they had hired developed mechanical problems, leaving them stranded in Tanzania. “We called the matatu welfare office in Nairobi and were instructed to wait for a spare tyre to arrive with the next matatu.
The driver abandoned them forcing them to make alternative arrangements of their return. “My wife squeezed in one of the other vehicles and paid Sh3,000 to Nairobi.” Mr Ngowi arrived yesterday after he secured a lift from a driver until Kiserian where he boarded another matatu to Nairobi.
Passengers can also take a matatu to Namanga then take another to Loliondo for Sh3,500.
Public Health and Sanitation minister Beth Mugo has warned that the unproven cure could undermine the gains so far made in treating infectious diseases.
The main ingredient of the Loliondo cure was last month identified by Tanzanian authorities as a common plant in the region known as Carissa spinarum. It is also known as Carissa edulis according to the East African Harbarium of the National Museums of Kenya.
It is estimated that those opting for air travel could be spending upwards of Sh40,000.
“The demand on the Loliondo route is quite high,” said Mr Paul Denge, a pilot based in Nairobi.
Denge, who flies Heliservices helicopters, said that on Saturday one of their helicopters was operating from Arusha Airport.
Heliservices is a subsidiary of ALS Limited, a Kenya registered aviation firm, which operates a fleet of small aircraft.
“We have been there countless times and demand is growing,” he said. Several aviation firms in Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda have been airlifting people to Loliondo, he said.
“Some of the sick taken there are sponsored by family friends or private businesses. In other cases, people raise money to charter the aircraft,” he said. Some patients are flown there paralysed or in a critical condition, sometimes requiring them to be accompanied by doctors or nurses.
The low cost of the herbal concoction has been cited as the reason for the growing demand for the medicine despite the fact there is so far no scientific evidence on its efficacy.
Source:
Daily Nation
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