Cape Town | Wednesday
NEW mortality statistics have shown that violence rivals Aids as a threat to South African society, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told a news conference on Wednesday.
But her assertion, backing up President Thabo Mbeki, is at odds with UNAids figures which suggest that annual deaths due to Aids are nearly 10 times those due to homicide.
Mbeki has been criticised widely for questioning the orthodox view that HIV is the only cause of Aids. He has denied antiretroviral drugs to state-funded patients on cost and safety grounds and has ordered new research into the causes and identification of Aids.
Tshabalala-Msimang, who has defended President Thabo Mbeki’s unorthodox views on HIV and Aids, said the country had no reliable statistics on the causes of death.
But she said first results from a three-year mortuary-based study had shown that about a quarter of all deaths were due to causes such as homicide, accident and suicide.
“We estimate that around 60_000 non-natural deaths occur in South Africa every year and that is approximately 25% of all deaths,” she said.
“The results of the 1999 survey show that we really are a violent society,” she added.
On Monday, Mbeki said in a BBC interview that violence had become the greatest threat to the country seven years after the end of white, apartheid rule.
Asked whether he thought Aids, expected to kill seven million South Africans over the next 10 years was his top priority, Mbeki said: “The largest single cause of death as we sit here is what in medical statistics is called ‘external causes’ and that is violence in this society.”
Tshabalala-Msimang said that of the 60_000 violent and accidental deaths in 1999, 46 percent were by homicide, 34% by accident and eight percent by suicide. The remainder was not accounted for. The figure suggests that violence was a direct cause of 30_000 deaths in 1999.
The United Nations’ UNAids monitoring body estimated in its latest data that between 180_000 and 250_000 adult South Africans died of Aids in 1999 and that up to 74_000 children aged 14 and under had been killed by the disease.
Tshabalala-Msimang argues Aids statistics were not yet accurate enough to compare with data on violent deaths. She did not explain why Mbeki had felt at liberty to make the comparison.
“Are we perhaps not being side-tracked and only looking at one social condition at the expense of others. I am not saying that issues of HIV and Aids should be relegated simply because we are now talking about violence, but it does demonstrate the magnitude of the problem,” said Tshabalala-Msimang. – Own reporter, Reuters
ZA*NOW:
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President Mbeki opens controversial Aids panel May 6, 2000
FEATURES:
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