South African President Under Fire From AIDS Activists
D U R B A N, South Africa, July 10 — AIDS activists and health experts today denounced South African President Thabo Mbeki’s handling of the AIDS crisis, saying his government had “at almost every conceivable turn mismanaged the epidemic.”
Mbeki opened the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban Sunday night with a speech defending his government’s commitment to fight AIDS, which has already claimed 4.2 million lives in South African. He said he is looking for an African solution to the epidemic.
Mbeki has outraged scientists in the past by questioning whether HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, causes AIDS. He has also sparked controversy by refusing to give the drug AZT to pregnant women and rape victims under the country’s public health system on the grounds of high costs. He did not mention either issue in his speech, but instead launched a broadside against his critics.
‘Governmental Ineptitude’
The chief organizer of the conference, Hoosen Coovadia, said many attendees felt “an absolute sense of disappointment” in Mbeki’s speech.
“Many people believe that the president would use the occasion to try and quell some of the disquiet around government’s position on HIV-AIDS,” Coovadia said.
Edwin Cameron, a South African high court judge who is HIV-positive, criticized Mbeki’s government for failing to take action.
“In my own country, a government that in its commitment to human rights and democracy has been a shining example to Africa and the world has at almost every conceivable turn mismanaged the epidemic,” he said.
“So grevious has governmental ineptitude been that South Africa has since 1998 had the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in the world.” Experts have estimated that nearly 8 million South Africans will be infected with HIV/AIDS by the end of the decade.
“We have failed to take HIV/AIDS seriously,” said Winne Madikizela-Mandela, ex-wife of former President Nelson Mandela and head of the African National Congress’ Women’s League. “That failure is a betrayal of our struggle for social justice and hope for our society.”
‘They Died Because They’re Poor’
In his speech, Mbeki stressed the devastating impact poverty has had on Africa. As he spoke, thousands of demonstrators marched to protest the high price of drugs to fight AIDS. They blamed both the government and pharmaceutical companies.
Today, U.N. AIDS Executive Director Peter Piot called for debt relief so that AIDS-stricken countries could spend more money on battling the disease.
“Let’s remember that African countries alone pay $15 billion per year in terms of debt repayments, $15 billion, that’s four times as much as on education and health,“ he said.
Zackie Achmat, chairman of South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign, said although he is HIV-positive, he refuses to take some medicines that could improve his health and prolong his life until they are available to everyone.
“I wouldn’t personally want to be involved in a holocaust against poor people,” he told ABCNEWS’ Good Morning America.
“Last year, 150,000 South Africans died of illnesses and they died because they’re poor,” Achmat said. “They cannot afford the revolutionary new medicines that have made many people in our country and in our world live much longer.”
Demanding Access to Drugs
Many conference delegates are asking — and some are demanding — that giant pharmaceutical companies give their products away, arguing it’s the only way to keep alive poor AIDS victims in Third World countries.
Jeffrey Sturchio, spokesman for the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck and Co., said AIDS activists and drug companies share a lot of common ground, but they may differ on how to improve access.
“No company and no country can address this problem alone,” he said on Good Morning America. “What’s needed is a new approach to global public health with all stakeholders coming together to address this question with the resources and expertise they can bring to bear with it.”
Merck announced today that it is teaming with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to spend $100 million to fight AIDS in the African nation of Botswana, the world’s worst-hit AIDS country. In Botswana, more than one-third of all adults are infected with HIV, experts believe.
‘We All Ought to Be Mobilizing’
Meanwhile, some alarming predictions on AIDS were released at the conference:.
The populations of some AIDS-stricken African countries will soon begin to fall as millions die of the disease.
Life expectancy in Africa could plunge to 30 years of age by 2010 because of people dying early from AIDS. For instance, life expectancy is now 39 in Botswana, instead of 71 — what it would have been without AIDS.
“This epidemic in South Africa and around the world is out of control and the numbers are staggering and we all ought to be mobilizing to do more,” said Sandra Thurman, the U.S. AIDS “czar.”
Experts estimate that 25 million Africans are already infected with HIV, and most of them will die within the next five to eight years. In South Africa, an estimated 10 percent of the nation’s 44 million people are HIV-positive.
ABCNEWS’ Jim Wooten, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
