Mail & Guardian - Friday, September 21, 2001
Brendan Boyle, Cape Town
"No one in our country can afford to deny the terrible extent of this epidemic," the group said in a statement asking Mbeki to declare Aids a national emergency.
"The data are clear and must not be obscured by wishful thinking. No organisation or individual should try to suppress the facts. That way lies disaster," they said.
The statement was drafted after a meeting on Monday between the Anglican and Catholic churches, the 1,8-million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).
The group said they had agreed to devise a common programme to "overcome the denial syndrome that has emerged in some official and unofficial circles." Delegates declined to say whether Mbeki, who has questioned the causal link between HIV and Aids and says it is not the biggest threat facing his country, was among those "in denial".
"We don't want to separate the president from the government. We are making a call on the government, led by the president," Cosatu delegate Derrick Cele told a news conference.
The group demanded the immediate release of a confidential report by the statutory Medical Research Council (MRC), which, according to media reports, confirms Aids as the country's biggest killer.
Citing a leaked copy of the report, the Johannesburg Sunday Times newspaper said it showed Aids accounted for 40% of deaths of people aged 15 to 49 in 2000.
Catholic Bishop Reginald Cawcutt said: "They cannot withhold that report. It is our report. It was paid for with taxpayer's funds and it belongs to the people."
Mbeki has challenged claims by the United Nations and local pressure groups that Aids kills more people than anything else.
He said in a BBC television interview in August that violence and accidents together claimed more lives than Aids.
Mbeki said in a letter to his health minister last month that Aids accounted for only 2,2% of all deaths and he asked her to gather reliable statistics on causes of death.
Health Ministry statistics indicate that one in nine South Africans --about 4,7-million people --are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes Aids.
The Aids support group Love Life estimates that 120 000 people died of Aids last year and that the number will jump to about 635 000 in 2010.
But the government says it has no totally reliable statistics and that reports it has received from various sources cannot be released until research methods have been assessed.
TAC chairman Zackie Achmat said his Aids support group had written to Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang on Thursday, giving her a week to publish the MRC report and all other statistical research on HIV and AIDS. Achmat threatened legal proceedings to get the report published.
The TAC has already launched legal action to force the government to supply the drug anti-Aids drug nevirapine, which is believed to greatly reduce mother-to-child infection during birth, to pregnant women during delivery.
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