Cape Town, Johannesburg | Thursday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday said he had discovered on the Internet that anti-retroviral drugs are as dangerous as Aids.
”There are new guidelines that anti-retrovirals are becoming as dangerous to health as the disease they are suppose to treat,” Mbeki told the National Assembly.
He said he was referring to new guidelines for the use of anti-retrovirals released earlier this year by the United States’ Centre for Disease Control (CDC).
Mbeki said the guidelines ”radically revise the use of these drugs … of what should happen before you dispense these drugs.”
He said he had found the information that he was referring to on the CDC’s website on the Internet and suggested that doctors who prescribe the drugs in South Africa take it into consideration.
Mbeki has for two years stirred controversy with his views on Aids and anti-retrovirals.
He has questioned the link between HIV and Aids and has refused to provide anti-retrovirals on public health because he believes the drugs are too toxic.
The guidelines on CDC’s website say that ”treatment should be offered to all patients with the acute HIV syndrome, those within six months of HIV seroconversion, and all patients with symptoms. Recommendations for offering antiretroviral therapy in asymptomatic patients require analysis of many real and potential risks and benefits”. In reply to Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon, Mbeki acknowledged he had not seen a 1999 UNAids/WHO (World Health Organisation) report on the same website on which he had found 1995 WHO statistics on causes of death in South Africa.
Based on the 1995 report, Mbeki reportedly ordered a re-examination of South Africa’s social policy spending priorities.
In a letter to Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Mbeki warned it would ”provoke a howl of displeasure and a concerted propaganda campaign from those who have convinced themselves that HIV/Aids was the single biggest cause of death”.
The 1995 report said ”Aids disease” was the cause of just 2,2% of deaths in South Africa, with the leading cause ascribed to unnatural causes such as accidents, murder and suicide (19,8%).
Mbeki asked Leon to forward him the 1999 UNAids report to both himself and Tshabalala-Msimang.
Leon told MPs the UNAids/WHO report said Aids had claimed 250 000 South African lives in 1999.
In a statement after the president’s reply, Leon said it was ”bizarre” Mbeki had seen the 1995 statistics, but not the 1999 report, ”which was widely publicised and appears on the same website”.
”He is selectively playing with figures to downplay and deny the scale of the Aids pandemic,” Leon charged.
Leon also questioned Mbeki on whether he would increase spending in the light of the Medical Research Council report that an estimated 40% of deaths among 15 to 49 year olds last year was due to Aids.
Mbeki said the government was constantly evaluating all its programmes to ensure these remained ”relevant to changing realities”.
”We adopt the same approach in respect of programmes to address the health needs of our population.
”It is within this context that I asked the minister of health to examine the latest known statistics on the numbers and causes of death in South Africa, and advise government on whether it is responding correctly to the picture painted by those statistics.”
The social cluster of ministers was looking into the matter.
In an apparent acknowledgement that he had not himself read the MRC report, Mbeki said: ”I am informed that the MRC report … does not fully address the issues I raised in my letter to the minister, since it addresses only one cause of death, namely HIV/Aids.”
The information set out in the report was being evaluated by an inter-departmental task team, led by Statistic South Africa, as well as the presidential advisory body.
MRC officials served on both bodies.
The reports from these processes were still outstanding, Mbeki said.
”We are therefore not considering any reapportionment of funding until that social cluster of ministers and these other processes are concluded.
”We will then decide as to how to proceed with this matter,” he said.
Meanwhile, Judge Edwin Cameron, writing in Thursday’s edition of Business Day, said there was a crisis of action surrounding the disease.
He said dealing with the infection, illness and mortality presented huge problems of policy and decision making.
”Without proper leadership and management, the effects of infection and illness on every individual and every family and every organisation are worsened – and the scale of bereavement and death resulting from Aids promises to be too enormous to contemplate.
”This much is – or should be – obvious, but there are some in our country who dispute the obvious,” the paper quoted him as saying.
”They dispute that a virally specific infectious disease, which in an overwhelming majority of cases is transmitted through sex, is causing a crises of death and dying in our country.”
Cameron said such attitudes had given rise to a another crises – the crises of ”truth and truth telling”.
”This crises is the most acute, since denial, obfuscation and evasion of the truth paralyses our nation, just when principled leadership is required to avoid incalculable suffering and bereavement”. – Sapa, AFP, DMG reporter
ZA*NOW:
Aids will kill 700_000 South Africans a year October 17, 2001
The Aids report the state tried to squash October 5, 2001
‘Explaining Mbeki as whites did apartheid’ October 2, 2001
SA coalition demands end to Aids ‘denial’ September 21, 2001
Aids: ‘Six million dead by 2010’ September 17, 2001
Mbeki on Aids: head in sand, foot in mouth September 10, 2001
Aids: Foot-and-mouth spreads in cabinet August 9, 2001
Mbeki fudges Aids question, again June 28, 2001
US media lays into Mbeki June 27, 2001
Aids report: condoms or cucumbers? April 7, 2001
President Mbeki opens controversial Aids panel May 6, 2000
FEATURES:
Cosatu joins hands with churches October 8, 2001
HIV time bomb implodes life expectancy in South Africa September 25, 2001
Five million South Africans to die over ten years September 21, 2001
Aids suit: State’s reply September 17, 2001
President’s panel on Aids hands over report January 19, 2001
All the president’s scientists: Diary of a round-earther May 6, 2000
Govt sticks to current Aids policy April 6, 2000
Q-ONLINE:
Mbeki stoked South Africa’s Aids catastrophe June 12, 2001
OFF-SITE:
UNAids country report on South Africa
Mbeki’s Aids policy fails children July 10, Mbeki consigns Aids declaration to bin July 4, 2000
Mbeki’s Aids stance leaves scientists in a daze April 21, 2000
Mbeki pushes case of Aids ‘dissidents’ April 19, 2000