PETER DICKSON, Port Elizabeth | Friday
HIV causes Aids – but death in most cases is from depression. That’s the opinion of Eastern Cape MEC for Health Dr Bevan Goqwana, who also believes circumcision and single-sex boarding schools to be at the cutting edge of prevention.
Goqwana went public on his beliefs in Umtata last week at the launch of Temba Community Development Services, a new Transkei HIV/Aids awareness NGO.
Goqwana said the chances of circumcised youths becoming carriers of the HIV virus which causes Aids were minimal – since the virus “hid” in the foreskins of the uncircumcised. But astonished Eastern Cape doctors said this week that the “peek-a-boo” theory was bad science and no alternative to safe sex.
Doctors said there were strong indications that circumcision could offer some protection against sexually transmitted diseases, and hence reduce the open sores which help transmit the HIV virus. Poor hygiene among the uncircumcised might cause an infection that could ease HIV into the blood.
Goqwana also suggested separating the sexes at boarding schools, saying it would limit “illicit” sexual contact.
But it is the MEC’s ideas on death that has stunned Aids workers.
Goqwana said people died more rapidly of Aids once they had been diagnosed because they were “scared to death”. He added that they did not die from Aids, but from depression.
Goqwana told the gathering that while still in practice as a doctor in Tsolo – he became medical superintendent of Umtata General Hospital before his appointment as MEC for health last June – a woman patient had died two months after he had diagnosed her as HIV-positive. She had told her family and urged them to look after her child in the event of her death, but died “obviously because of depression” brought on by “family politics”.
The Eastern Cape’s western region – comprising of Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, Humansdorp, Graaff-Reinet and Grahamstown – has the province’s highest HIV/Aids infection rate.
There were only 30 HIV-positive cases diagnosed and six deaths reported in the region in 1989, with the first four cases being reported at a Port Elizabeth military base. By June this year, there had been 29201 diagnosed and 2804 dead.