OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Wednesday
AIDS activists have dimissed the South African government’s new ”back to basics” guidelines in the battle against the disease as ”fatally flawed”, with key anti-Aids drugs conspicuously absent from its strategy to prevent and treat HIV.
Although the new guidelines acknowledge that HIV causes Aids, they will limit the use of AZT, denying it even to pregnant women to stop transmission to their children and to rape victims.
The reluctance to widely dispense anti-retrovirals, which have been proven to help cut the risk of HIV transmission and help alleviate opportunistic infections, is expected to prompt renewed criticism of Pretoria’s response to the Aids crisis.
The guidelines, contained in nine booklets, come three weeks after the start of a government advertising campaign designed to clear up confusion created by President Thabo Mbeki’s much-publicised doubts on the link between HIV and Aids.
Like the damage-control ad campaign, it returns to conventional wisdom on HIV, preaching abstinence, fidelity and condom use to prevent the spread of the disease.
But though Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang hailed the guidelines as ”another milestone in our fight against this silent killer”, they are no more than a longer version of a five-year strategy to fight Aids announced in June.
Aids activists say the five-year plan treats HIV as another health problem and not a national priority. ”The government does not recognise that the key to effective prevention is effective treatment. Very few people are taking HIV tests because they feel there is no use as nothing can be done to treat them,” said Aids activist Mark Heywood.
The new government guidelines estimate there are 50 000 HIV-positive children who have been infected by their mothers.
Breastfeeding, safer sex, nutritional supplements and vaginal cleansing with an antiseptic solution are part of the policy recommendations to cut the risks of mother-to-child HIV transmission.
The guidelines take a different view on the use of anti-retrovirals to treat healthworkers infected with HIV by patients in their care, acknowledging the success of drugs such as AZT in fighting the disease.
The department also acknowledged a study in Thailand that showed that anti-retroviral therapy reduced mother-to-child transmission by up to two-thirds if the medication was given during pregnancy and labour and to the newborn infant. – AFP/Reuters