eTV's faith healing advertorial ‘fatal’ - TAC

Abstract

Appeals last month by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) to eTV’s ‘sense of ethics and morality’ to enable the canning of a 22-minute commercial programme that promotes demonstrably fatal faith-healing were studiously ignored, the organisation claims.

In the ‘Christ Embassy Healing School’ advertorial (aired at 07h30 on Sundays), its head, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, claims he can faith-heal cancer, heart disease and arthritis. The church’s website includes HIV/AIDS in its list of curable life-threatening conditions. At least two HIV-positive people died last year after attending Christ Embassy ‘healing’ services in Johannesburg, ‘faithfully’ stopping their ARV treatment, one of them also infecting family members with multidrug-resistant TB, it has since emerged.

TAC veteran activist and treasurer, Nathan Geffen, produced a doctor and senior nurse who worked at the GF Jooste district hospital on the Cape Flats last year and treated a young HIV-positive mother.