South Africa will ”never achieve redemption” for its HIV/Aids policies, the United Nations special envoy to Africa told the closing session of the International Aids Conference in Toronto on Friday.
Stephen Lewis accused the government of expounding HIV/Aids theories ”more worthy of a lunatic fringe than a concerned and compassionate state”.
”Between 600 and 800 people a day die [of HIV/Aids] in South Africa. The government has a lot to atone for, and I am of the opinion they will never achieve redemption,” Lewis said to a deafening roar of applause from the audience.
The African National Congress earlier called statements made by Lewis during the conference ”unacceptable”.
”It is not my job to be silenced by a government when I know what it is doing is wrong, immoral and indefensible,” he said.
He also mentioned the arrests of Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) leader Zackie Achmat and 44 protesters who occupied provincial government offices in Cape Town earlier on Friday. They were calling for the arrest of Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang after the death of a prisoner with Aids, which Lewis said ”should never have taken place”.
”It really is distressing when the coercive apparatus of the state is brought against the most principled members of society,” said Lewis.
South Africa’s HIV/Aids policies have featured prominently at the conference, with activists strongly condemning the health minister’s advocating nutrition as a prevention method.
Co-chairperson of the Aids conference Mark Wainberg called the theories ”scientific nonsense” and said it was unconscionable to use ”lemon juice as an HIV-prevention method”.
Lewis echoed calls by Wainberg for the rapid expansion of access to anti-retroviral treatment.
The conference, with more than 20 000 delegates and 2 000 journalists in attendance, saw themes such as prevention methods, harm reduction, nutrition and gender inequality featuring in thousands of abstracts, sessions, poster discussions and exhibitions throughout the week.
With people attending from more than 130 countries, a buzz of accents pervaded the conference centre. The Global Village exhibition area played host to sex workers, transgendered people, transvestites, injecting drug users, prisoners with HIV/Aids and traditional leaders from Africa.
Hot topics
In his closing speech, Lewis addressed some of the hot topics at the conference.
”Abstinence-only programmes do not work,” he said, adding that ideological rigidity almost never works with humans.
On the other hand, harm-reduction programmes, such as providing clean needles and substitution methadone to injecting drug users — among whom transmission has skyrocketed in parts of Asia and Eastern Europe — do work and should be widely implemented.
New prevention methods such as male circumcision, shown to reduce HIV-prevalence in early studies, and the excitement about microbicides are ”entirely warranted”.
He said in the hierarchy of prevention methods, prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMCT) is near the top. ”It is a bitter indictment that so few HIV-positive women have access to PMCT. It is inexcusable to continue to use single-dose nevirapine rather than full triple-dose therapy during pregnancy as we do in Western countries.”
Anders Nordstrom, acting director general of the World Health Organisation, said the lack of financing for HIV/Aids resources is an ”emergency”. Resources currently stand at about $8-billion, but the estimated need in low- and middle-income countries this year will be $15-billion, which will grow to $22-billion by 2008.
”This is no longer only an emergency, but also a long-term development agenda,” he said.
Nordstrom also said ”drastic measures” are needed to ensure there are sufficient health-care workers to deliver prevention, treatment, care and support. ”More people registered to attend this conference than there are doctors in the whole of Eastern and Central Africa,” he said.
Lewis said that in the next 25 years, every effort to fight the epidemic should be concentrated at country level.
The 17th International Aids Conference will take place in Mexico in 2008. — Sapa