From being the pride of Africa, South Africa is becoming more and more like never-never land. The recent, long-awaited announcement by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang that HIV does cause Aids, and that this is the basis of the government’s policy on the epidemic, is now being seriously undermined by the actions of a group in the ANC who appear to have gone totally over the top.
The article in “Aids drugs killed Parks, says ANC” (March 22) describing the document circulated by the ANC to its stuctures is terrifying. When President Thabo Mbeki opened the can of worms that is the Aids-dissident movement he clearly did not realise the immense and far-reaching implications of his action. We now have a document circulating in the government claiming that the belief that HIV causes Aids is “pseudo-science”. This same document lists the claims on the Aids dissident websites, most of them more than 12 years old, which purport to “prove” that there is no link between HIV and Aids, and even that the HI virus does not exist. On top of this, the group is saying that antiretroviral drugs cause the deaths of those who die of Aids-related illness.
Those of us working in the HIV world had started to hope vaguely that these dangerously misleading ideas were being laid to rest, and that the government’s intransigence on the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to HIV-positive pregnant women and others living with the virus was due mainly to a belief in problems relating to cost and infrastructure. In this scenario there is a basis for discussion and for hope that the problems posed by the epidemic can be solved.
But the emergence of this seriously deluded group of people within the ruling party suggests otherwise. Again, people are going to be confused about issues surrounding HIV and Aids. Again, it appears that the efforts of serious scientists, doctors and others who know that HIV causes Aids, and that anti-retroviral drugs are part of the solution, are potentially going to waste.
When is this going to stop? When will the sensible and intelligent people in the ANC admit that HIV/Aids is one of the most pressing problems facing Southern Africa, silence the deluded dissidents and act accordingly? Dr Bridget Farham, Noordhoek