Geoffrey York
Johannesburg — From Monday's Globe and Mail Published on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009 9:32PM EST Last updated on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009 3:45AM EST
In a sharp break from the days when South Africa's government was suggesting garlic and beet root as AIDS remedies, President Jacob Zuma is planning to be tested in public for HIV next month.
The test will be part of a dramatic expansion of HIV testing in South Africa, including tests for all of Mr. Zuma's cabinet ministers and a national campaign to encourage tests for citizens across the entire country, according to a South African newspaper report.
South Africa has more AIDS deaths than any other country in the world, but until recently it was notorious for the ignorance and denials of its top politicians.
Former president Thabo Mbeki, who was ousted in a power struggle last year, became infamous for questioning the value of AIDS drugs and suggesting that the disease might not be caused by the HIV virus.
The Mbeki government's hostility to standard AIDS treatment led to 365,000 premature deaths in South Africa from 2000 to 2005 alone, Harvard University researchers estimated in a recent study.
Mr. Mbeki had always refused to take an HIV test, dismissing it as a “publicity stunt,” despite evidence that testing could help prevent thousands of deaths.
His health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, proposed that AIDS could be treated with traditional African remedies such as garlic, lemon juice and beet root. Even as thousands of South Africans were dying without access to AIDS drugs, the minister was complaining that anti-retroviral drugs were “toxic.”
Mr. Zuma himself had displayed his own ignorance on AIDS issues during his trial on rape charges in 2006 when he testified that he had taken a shower after sex with an HIV-positive woman to protect himself from the virus.
But now the government is making a radical shift on the issue. In a series of speeches in the past three weeks, Mr. Zuma and his new health minister have called for an urgent battle against AIDS and HIV. They have warned that a rapidly escalating death rate from AIDS is decimating the country, killing especially those below the age of 50.
“Wherever you go across the country, you hear people lament the frequency with which they have to bury family members and friends,” Mr. Zuma said. “At this rate, there is a real danger that the number of deaths will soon overtake the number of births.”
The government has made it clear that it is determined to reverse the ignorance of the past, which one official called “the lost years.”
In a presentation on the latest AIDS numbers last week, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi put the blame squarely on the government of the past 10 years. “Our attitude toward HIV/AIDS put us where we are,” he told reporters. “In the past, we were not really fighting HIV/AIDS, we were fighting against each other.”
Mr. Zuma's public HIV test, and the ambitious new campaign for widespread testing, is expected to be announced on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day. Under the plan, doctors and nurses would routinely offer HIV tests to all of their patients, and celebrities would urge everyone to be tested. The tests would be voluntary, but the new availability of tests would produce a dramatic rise in the number of people tested across the country.
It would be a “massive mobilization campaign,” Mr. Zuma said in his speech. “All South Africans need to know their HIV status, and be informed of the treatment options available to them.”
Of the estimated 5.3 million South Africans who are infected with HIV, only a minority know their status.
Last year, according to a government research council, only a quarter of South Africans had taken an HIV test within the previous 12 months.
A leading activist group, Treatment Action Campaign, said the speech by Mr. Zuma was one of the most important in the history of AIDS in the country. “With this speech, state-supported AIDS denialism has been banished,” the group said.
Mr. Zuma has pledged to cut the rate of new HIV infections by half and provide anti-retroviral drugs to 80 per cent of those who need them by 2011.
Source : http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/south-africa-radically-shifts-aids-thinking/article1364340/
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