Garlic saved my neck

Jul 26, 2005

IT started as a small pimple. Within a year, it had grown to the size of an egg. Relatives and friends panicked and thought George Kanike was developing goitre.

By Sarah Muwanga
IT started as a small pimple. Within a year, it had grown to the size of an egg. Relatives and friends panicked and thought George Kanike was developing goitre.
Ten years later, the swelling had grown to the size of a ball!
Kanike says it started with a visit to a salon. After the barber had shaved his beard, Kanike got a painful lump around the throat. “The lump grew day by day. It is possible the barber was not sterilising his instruments.”
“At first, I did not take it seriously until it went out of hand,” says the 49-year-old businessman/ farmer of Buwanume village in Kamuli district. When antibiotics failed to heal it, he resorted to local herbs in vain.
“In just one year, I had visited almost all hospitals in the country,” he said. At Jinja Hospital, doctors said the strange swelling was not a goitre. They refused to operate him and instead put him on a six-month medication. Kanike decided to try Chinese doctors around town.
“They also failed!”
Then he moved to Mulago Hospital. “They said cutting it could kill me and instead, gave me pain killers and other drugs I cannot remember. I gave up and tried Nsambya Hospital where I was referred to Lacor Hospital in Gulu.”
In Lacor, doctors recommended an operation at a cost of about sh1m. Kanike gave up.
But the problem worsened. The swelling started oozing pus and blood. He almost lost his two wives because of his foul smell. Colleagues resented him and with this kind of treatment, the pain and embarrassment made him want to commit suicide.
That was when a friend directed him to Dr David Ssali, a dermatologist and herbal specialist who offered to treat him for free. It was in July 2004. Dr. Ssali of Dama Medical Herbs Clinic at Mitchell Cotts building in Kampala studied modern medicine in Germany but uses herbal medicine to treat skin and skin-related problems.
“Dr. Ssali successfully cut the thing and here I am, a happy man once again,” Kanike says with a smile.
“I could see it was keloids. It is a cancer but not the risky type. I never used any stitches, no injections and no tablets. I just applied garlic (katungurucumu) and powdered herbs and dressed the wound. I also gave him a herbal soap to wash the wound.” Ssali says.
Ssali assured him the keloid would not form again. A year later, he said he could not be sure about it. “It depends so much on his discipline. He has never come back for further consultation. Yet using garlic daily is not easy. It has an unpleasant burning sensation which demotivates the patient. If he stops applying garlic, the keloids will come back.”
Dr. Fred Kambugu, a skin specialist at Mulago, declined to comment on Ssali’s therapy. “I am not qualified to give a comment on alternative medicines. In dermatology, we do not have garlic as a medicine for keloids and from what I know, keloids are not curable.”
According to Dr Sentongo, some people treat scars and refer to them as keloids. “In surgical medicine, we only achieve 85% and not 100 so we cannot say that we cure keloids.”
But Dr Ssali has a lot of faith in natural remedies. “They can be stronger and work better than modern medicine in many cases.”
Ends

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