Johannesburg | Tuesday
THE Treatment Action Campaign has reacted angrily to Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s claim that the debate on anti-retroviral Aids drugs is misplaced.
”A discussion of anti-retrovirals in a country with 200 000 people dying a year is hardly misplaced unless you attach no worth to those lives,” TAC national secretary Mark Heywood said on Tuesday.
”ARVs are the best medicine for people with Aids.”
Manuel, speaking on Monday at the launch of a census report on youth, said the Aids debate in South Africa was misplaced because it focused on anti-retrovirals rather than education.
”What antiretrovirals don’t do is to change the status of somebody. Nor do the anti-retrovirals on their own change the conduct of an individual who may be exceedingly promiscuous.
”It does not in any way limit the spread, but all of the focus is on anti-retrovirals, whereas in fact we need an educated population,” Manuel said.
Heywood, whose organisation has taken the government to court over its reluctance to provide ARV’s to stop mother-to-child transmission of the disease, said Manuel appeared not to know what he was talking about.
”Just as he would expect people to familiarise themselves with economics before they make interventions in that sphere, he ought to familiarise himself with the science of ARVs, because there is a strong body of evidence that the reduction of viral load does reduce transmissibility and therefore has prevention benefits.”
Heywood said there were misplaced debates on HIV/Aids, but these originated in the highest circles of government.
They included debates on whether there was merit in being tested for HIV, and whether HIV caused Aids.
”Manuel should also study a little bit of the sociology of Aids, because then he would also understand that it is not promiscuity that is the primary driver (of the spread of infection) but inequality, particularly in sexual relations between men and women.”
Another major factor behind the spread was that the vast majority of people had no incentive to test for HIV, and therefore continued behaving in a way that put themselves and others at risk.
The incentive, said Heywood, would be access to appropriate treatment –something government is also fighting shy of.
Heywood said Manuel’s comments were ”part of a theme that we keep hearing from (government) at the moment”.
”They keep on talking about poverty as a barrier to treatment, but the alleviation of poverty is in their hands. They are the people that have chosen to spend upwards of R40-billion on weapons systems and hold off popular demand for things like a basic income grant.
”If we had something like the grant it would enormously alleviate poverty and make it possible to have the nutrition that Manto (Tshabalala-Msimang, Minister of Health) keeps going on about.
”The unmaking of poverty is not something that TAC can do. It is something that government can do because it has resources.” – Sapa