JEAN-MICHEL STOULLIG, Washington | Thursday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki used his visit to the United States to show his commitment to fight the plague of Aids in his country, but was unable to quiet critics of his controversial positions on the disease.
The president kept the disease front and centre during his trip, discussing it with his US counterpart George W. Bush, answering questions about it and about his absence from a UN Aids conference, visiting a pharmaceutical research centre to praise medical advances and plead for generic drugs.
Mbeki has been criticised, notably by the US media, for having said in 2000 that Aids might not be directly caused by HIV, despite the fact that his country has the world’s largest HIV population with 4,7-million infected.
At a breakfast speech on Wednesday, Mbeki explained his broad vision for medical and social treatment of the disease.
“The immune deficiency syndrome gets acquired from somewhere, including a virus,” he said. “It is in the medical textbooks that the immune system can be compromised by a whole variety of things, not only a virus … (but also) malnutrition, the impact of other diseases.”
Traders on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange said on Wednesday that Mbeki’s comment had injected a note of uncertainty into the market as investors were looking for a tougher stance on the epidemic from the government. The rand fell back to 8,0336 against the dollar, slipping with a weaker euro.
Mbeki also called for “a comprehensive approach, regarding malnutrition, clean water, the general health conditions of people, and we specifically respond to HIV as well.”
The South African leader was also questioned about his absence at the three-day UN conference on Aids that ended on Wednesday in New York.
“Part of the problem is one can’t be in two places at the same time,” he said.
The conference, which was attended by 30 heads of state, mostly from Africa and the Caribbean, recommended a global plan for prevention and treatment of Aids that made no mention of homosexuality.
The successor to Nelson Mandela also paid a visit to the US pharmaceutical giant Merck in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, praising their work on an Aids vaccine.
“They communicated a very interesting, a very encouraging story,” he said. “On the work they are doing to develop an Aids vaccine … there is clearly a lot of progress.”
Questioned about generic drugs, Mbeki put forth an agreement with an unnamed “US company” to furnish anti-retroviral medication, saving South Africa some 50 million dollars by year.
On Tuesday, Bush and Mbeki confirmed their commitment to fighting the pandemic.
“We have to do something because, in many instances, these are diseases which are not only caused by poverty, some of them, but also cause poverty,” Mbeki said. – AFP, Reuters
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