HIV patients chained to trees and walls

"UNSHACKLING. Sight of addicts, mental patients chained to walls of rehab centre accepted by locals
Story by WASSANA NANUAM

The sight of men chained to trees and walls at a ponoh school in Mayo district may shock strangers, but not local people. These men have been diagnosed as mentally deranged from prolonged drug abuse, or are HIV-Aids positive.

A charity rehabilitation centre set up at the school provides herbal treatments which are accepted by local people even though they have not been approved by the Public Health Ministry. The centre was founded by Sakariya Jehtae, the babor, or headmaster, who was formerly a religious teacher at Thammathan Foundation School in Yala. He converted his house into a ponoh school-cum-mental asylum and Aids treatment centre, operating under religious principles, 18 years ago. Nearly 2,000 patients have so far been treated at the centre with herbal medicines twice a day, in the morning and at bedtime.

Most patients are young Muslim men, all are shackled to prevent them escaping. Some had gone berserk and smashed everything around them. The herbal treatments are said to cure drug addicts, the mentally ill and those in the early stage of HIV-Aids....."

Full article, though no further mention of HIV, at : http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/12Jan2006_news02.php

Malang Masae, 36, from Yaring district said he was admitted suffering from hallucinations as a result of drug abuse. He had now recovered. He wanted to go home and would not take drugs again because being chained up was painful.

Treatment? Sounds more like a publicly run prison, designed to deter drug use and sexual acts. I wonder if the locals fund it for moral reasons? Also, it says some of the patients are diagnosed as deranged. Diagnosed by whom? A real doctor? Or the charitable gentleman who runs the affair? Too few facts.