DURBAN, South Africa, June 7 (AFP) - South Africa's military is "fighting a war" against HIV and AIDS which affects 23 percent of its forces and is hampering its ability to serve in peace missions abroad, a brigadier general told a national AIDS conference on Tuesday.
But the introduction of US-funded anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment last year in the South African national forces may provide new insight into building a combat-ready force whose members are living with HIV, said military officials speaking at the conference in Durban.
"From the military health perspective, we are fighting a war, a human war," said Brigadier General Pieter Oelofse, director of medicine for the South African military.
"We are faced with a formidable enemy which is HIV and AIDS," he said.
Under UN guidelines, soldiers who are HIV positive are discouraged from serving in international peace missions but Oelofse said the South African government is considering whether to depart from that stance if research under way shows that soldiers can take ARVs and carry guns.
"Our challenge is that because we are involved with the peace missions, we have to have enough deployable troops," Oelofse said.
While the South African military is able for the time being to supply soldiers for its current missions in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Oelofse warned: "We are getting a bit stretched."
About 1,000 soldiers and their dependants, including 56 children are taking ARVs under a US-funded program that also provides for research into the impact of the life-prolonging drugs on the military's combat-readiness.
The US goverment has provided 50 million dollars over the next five years to the South African military under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which aims to fund ARVs for 500,000 South Africans by 2008.
Colonel Xolani Currie, who heads research into the impact of ARVs for the military, said the treatment had brought hope for soldiers and raised morale.
"We had members sitting hopelessly at the base with no hope," said Currie. "Some of them are now running around in the mountains," he said, referring to HIV-positive troops now serving in border control units.
The deployment of HIV-positive troops in border units is part of ongoing research into the effects of ARVs and military operations but officials warned there were no conclusions reached yet on the use of the drugs by servicemen.
"It's early days still," said Oelofse. "The data is being collected. It's a five-year project."
About 81 percent of South Africa's 70,000 military personnel have undergone testing that was stepped up in the past year, when 66 percent came forward to establish their HIV status. Testing is mandatory for soldiers who enlist in international peace missions.
The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the military was found to be at 23 percent, slightly higher than the rate of 21.5 percent in South Africans at large.
South Africa has one of the highest AIDS caseloads in the world, with some 5.3 million people or about one in five adults living with AIDS and HIV, according to the UN AIDS agency. More than one million children have been orphaned by AIDS, which the Medical Research Council says is the leading cause of death in the country.
Some 4,000 experts, scientists, medical professionals, activists and community workers were taking part in the second national AIDS conference, that was to officially open later on Tuesday with an address from Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
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