Minister jeered at S Africa AIDS meeting

Activists have jeered South Africa’s Health Minister at the opening of a national AIDS conference in Durban.

Activists have jeered South Africa’s Health Minister at the opening of a national AIDS conference in Durban.The meeting started amid mounting anger at the Government’s response to the disease, which activists say kills 600 South Africans a day.Protesters holding up signs reading “Save Our Youth, Save Our Future, Treat AIDS Now” heckled Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang as she opened the conference.About 2,500 delegates are attending the gathering in the port city of Durban.AIDS activists blame the Minister for delaying the introduction of life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs.”Shame on you” rang out in the auditorium as she said South Africa would set its AIDS policies “without influence from foreign agendas”.”Some say that providing anti-retrovirals is as simple as administering aspirin – far from the truth,” Ms Tshabalala-Msimang said to boos from the audience.”The provision of anti-retroviral drugs in the public health sector is a subject which must be considered soberly and the Government is doing so.”The four-day Durban conference is the first national AIDS meeting in South Africa.EpidemicSouth Africa has the single highest AIDS caseload in the world, with about 4.7 million people infected.Economists say the epidemic is a significant threat to the future of the nation, Africa’s economic powerhouse, with average life expectancy estimated at just 45 years by 2005.Critics say South Africa has moved too slowly on HIV/AIDS and the Government’s refusal to permit public sector hospitals to use anti-retroviral drugs, the only medicines proven effective against AIDS, has stoked anger.President Thabo Mbeki’s Government has questioned the drugs as expensive, potentially dangerous and difficult to take.It argues that priority must go to fighting the widespread black poverty that remains nine years after the end of white rule.Mr Mbeki did not attend the meeting.But Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who heads the National AIDS Council, repeated that new drug treatments would be introduced – but only when the country was ready for them.”We need to ensure that the necessary infrastructures are in place,” Mr Zuma said.Out of stepPeter Piot, head of the United Nations AIDS body UNAIDS, hinted that South Africa was dangerously out of step with the rest of the world when it came to AIDS treatment policy.”Throughout the world the debate is not whether to offer anti-retroviral treatment but how to do it,” Mr Piot said in a video address to the meeting.”For heaven’s sake, let’s not wait until we have the perfect solution.”South Africa’s AIDS activist organisations have vowed to keep pressure on the Government.The Treatment Action Campaign, the nation’s biggest activist group, has backed civil disobedience as a way to force the Government’s hand.Protesters marched through Durban as the meeting started, to make their voices heard.”If they want proof it works, I am proof. I am alive,” said 26-year-old Zinhle Thabetha, one of about 100 HIV-positive people getting anti-retroviral treatment through a local non-government organisation.Activist anger was further amplified last week when the Medicines Control Council, an independent state regulator, announced it might withdraw temporary approval for Nevirapine.It is an anti-retroviral drug used to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child.The council said it doubted the research used to back up the drug’s efficacy.At Sunday’s opening session, scientists said they were flabbergasted regulators would consider removing one of the few medical options available to fight HIV in the country and vowed to fight the decision.”The AIDS epidemic has been bedevilled by unscientific, irrational, unreasonable and downright perverse attitudes,” said Jerry Coovadia, the conference chairman.”I really am left breathless by the decision of the MCC to question the validity of the scientific results around Nevirapine,” Dr Coovadia said.(Source: ABC, 4 August 2003)