Does giving a disease a local name give traditional healers right to treat it?

He made the comment during a press address where he announced the return of the annual passover night prayers after a two-year break due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic that shook the world was given a local name "Lumiima mawugwe" loosely translated to mean "squeezes the lungs". However, the name is created out of symptoms rather than the virus itself as is the case in "scientific" diseases.

Other 'scientific' diseases that have been given 'African' names include: Cancer, known locally as "Kookolo", HIV/AIDS "Mukenenya", Tuberculosis "Akafuba", Measles "Olukusense", Syphillis "Kabotongo", Colic in babies "Obwoka", among others.

Herbalists and traditional boast concoctions that they claim to heal these diseases, or at least, offer relief from them. The city is flooded with these alternative medicines and through their speakers, come recorded adverts of the wide range of deadly diseases that they cure.

However, this is not limited to traditional healers and herbalists.

At the press address, the pastor asked government to allow people to seek prayers from the church.

“I have not had any incident where someone has come to me to say they have Ebola and need prayers, but should it happen, every pastor knows what to do, we leave Bible schools knowing what to do, and we don’t come to church to learn what to do,” he said.

In a 2005 report, Pentecostal pastors were accused of weakening the fight against HIV/AIDS. In one case, Frances Adroa, an HIV-positive patient, contacted a Pentecostal pastor, Solomon Male of Arising for Christ Ministries in Kampala. She was promised that she would be healed if she sacrificed her car.

She did not get her healing. In fact, she got worse. And lost thousands of dollars in the ensuing battle to recover her car.

"They come and say 'You have to sacrifice your best.' And you really believe that what they are telling you is the truth so, that’s what I did. They even asked us (for) requests, which they are going to take to Mount Sinai and pray (over). I did not believe that they could do that to me. You believe pastors to be on a certain level that’s how every body looks at them," Mrs. Adroa said.

In another case, one Susan Walusimbi, accused the same pastor of encouraging her to get into a relationship with an allegedly cured HIV/AIDS patient. The pastor provided his HIV status report signed by his doctor.

At the time, Pentecostal pastor Bishop David Kiganda, the chairman of the National Fellowship of Born Again Churches (NFBC) in charge of Kampala District, said it was a few pastors who were carrying out such practices.

In response to the cases, Craig McClure, the executive director of the International AIDS Society, wrote an email in April of that year, denounced churches that attribute HIV / AIDS to supernatural activity.

Serwadda urged government to provide sufficient protection for health workers "so we don’t lose them to the very disease they are trying to battle like what happened in Covid-19."

Is there a perception that an "African" name transfers the disease into the realm of the supernatural or, in another extreme, "natural" where manufactured treatment drugs are viewed as "artificial", for traditional healers to attempt to cure them?