BEN MACLENNAN, Cape Town | Tuesday
THE Medical Research Council (MRC) said on Tuesday it stood firmly by its controversial report on Aids deaths, and that South Africa was experiencing an epidemic of “shattering” proportions.
The report, which says Aids accounted for one in four deaths in South Africa last year, came under fire from Statistics South Africa as potentially inaccurate even before it was officially made public.
The report predicts that without treatment or behavioural change, the number of Aids deaths will grow in the next 10 years to more than double the number of deaths due to all other causes resulting in five to seven million cumulative Aids deaths by 2010.
Speaking at the official release of the document at the MRC offices in Cape Town on Tuesday, MRC president Malegapuru Makgoba said his organisation was proud of it.
“The findings, and quality of the findings, of the report are unshakeable at the moment and this is what we stand by,” he said.
The release was held back for several weeks, apparently for last-minute consultations with government, and was given the green light only after it was presented to Cabinet last week.
Asked why the document went this route, and why the MRC – a supposedly autonomous institution — had not simply released it when it was completed, Makgoba said the government and the Department of Health were the institution’s most important stakeholders.
It was “prudent” for the MRC to balance its autonomy against its social responsibility, particularly on a report with such major policy implications as this one, and this was why it had decided to first engage with the government on the document.
Although Makgoba appealed to journalists not to use the report to sow division between “the various agencies of the state”, one of the authors of the report, actuarial expert Professor Rob Dorrington, told the briefing earlier that a Stats SA media presentation on the document had been “riddled with half-truths and misunderstandings”.
“It’s a great shame that Stats SA decided to trash the MRC in the way they did,” he said.
“It gives new meaning to the phrase lies, damned lies and statistics.”
Dorrington, who heads the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Actuarial Research, said he and his colleagues had invited Stats SA to a meeting on Monday to explore differences in their estimates of mortality.
He hoped that through this process, by the end of the year they could come up with an estimate certainly better than Stats SA’s, and possibly better than the MRC’s.
The report, which was leaked to the Mail & Guardian about two weeks ago, says about 40% of last year’s adult deaths in the 15 to 49 year age group, and about 20% of all adult deaths, were due to the disease.
“When this is combined with the excess deaths in childhood from other research we have undertaken, it is estimated that Aids accounted for 25% of all deaths in the year 2000 and has thus become the single biggest cause of death,” the report says.
The finding is an embarrassment to President Thabo Mbeki, who maintains the impact of the disease is being exaggerated, and has called for a review of spending on HIV/Aids programmes.
The researchers said in a document distributed on Tuesday that these “shocking” projections should galvanise efforts to minimise the devastation of the epidemic.
They said prevention of mother-to-child transmission would significantly reduce the number of child deaths, and that effective behaviour change programmes for adolescents and adults would “significantly” reduce the prevalence of the disease.
The researchers said Stats SA had suggested that the only way to determine the size of the epidemic was to conduct a sample survey of the population, testing blood or saliva.
They said that while they agreed there was a need to collect better information on the epidemic, they did not agree that so little was known now that they should not make any estimates.
“We believe there is sufficient information and data already available to gauge the extent of the epidemic,” they said.
“The need for better data must not prevent the analysis an interpretation of available data sources to best inform the decision-makers as soon as possible.” – Sapa
ZA*NOW:
Aids report ‘out on Tuesday’ September 27, 2001
The Aids report the state tried to squash October 5, 2001
‘We can’t release Aids report – it’s not ours’ September 27, 2001
DA requests MRC’s Aids report September 25, 2001
SA coalition demands end to Aids ‘denial’ September 21, 2001
The people have spoken – release the Aids report September 20, 2001
Aids: ‘Six million dead by 2010’ September 17, 2001
Mbeki on Aids: head in sand, foot in mouth September 10, 2001