Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang should resign over her lack of leadership on HIV/Aids, the Aids Law Project told a conference in Toronto, Canada, on Thursday.
”I believe our minister of health should resign,” head of the project Mark Heywood said to shouts of approval from a packed session room at the International Aids Conference.
He said the high HIV prevalence and Aids deaths in South Africa are an example of the consequences of lack of political leadership.
”If there isn’t a government at the centre encouraging leadership, then you have got a problem, and that’s what you see in South Africa.
”I say that not because I am disloyal, but because I am loyal to these people … that are dying this minute in poor communities and being deprived of medical services. That is a human rights violation and it has to be stopped, and you have to help us stop it.”
During the discussions, a moderator made three calls for anyone from the South African ministry of health to respond. Tshabalala-Msimang, sitting in the audience, did not accept the offer.
A woman who identified herself as an official from the ministry of health said South Africa should be commended for having the highest rates of adherence to antiretroviral (ARV) therapy in the world, according to studies by the United States.
”The South African government takes into consideration each and every player — it could be traditional healers … we want to give everybody an ear.”
She added that she had a large budget to ”play around with” and was not constrained by anybody in doing so.
Heywood noted that statistics, such as that more people between the ages of 20 and 30 were dying, than those between the ages of 60 and 70, were not imagined.
”It has struck me how much we have known about the epidemic, and how little we have acted on it.”
In 1990, the late South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani recognised the ”untold damage and suffering” Aids would cause, and research a year later showed where the risk groups lay, said Heywood.
”If we had the political will at an earlier stage we could have saved thousands of lives. Instead, in South Africa we have fought … over whether HIV causes Aids, whether ARVs work or are poisonous. We have fought and failed to provide leadership … and the disease has grown and grown,” he said.
He said the topic of political leadership had been one of the greatest missing pieces at the conference. Much of the first 25 years of the epidemic have been spent making scientific discoveries, and the means now exist to avert the global pandemic.
Without political leadership, Heywood said, these discoveries will not be turned into public-health interventions.
”We need science for public health’s sake.”
He called on the world to speak up against South Africa’s Aids policies as they had against apartheid.
”When this many people are dying in the face of anti-leadership and [denialism] then the world has to speak up, and the world is not speaking up,” he said.
The theme of the 16th Aids conference is ”Time to Deliver”. The fourth day of the conference started off with the focus on what happens when there is no delivery of treatment, and how to ensure there is in future.
Heywood said success will start with recognition at the highest level of government that Aids is a threat to the growth of developing countries. He said the government has a critical duty to coordinate society’s efforts against the epidemic.
He said the government needs to create hard targets and monitor and evaluate programmes put in place to reach those targets. — Sapa