Front Line in the AIDS War

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Front Line in the AIDS War

Boston Globe (12.26.01) - Friday, December 28, 2001
Thomas Gagen

"...In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni personally led the anti- AIDS campaign, spreading the message of prevention to every part of the country. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela, the first freely elected president, was prudish about sexual matters, and he was succeeded by [Thabo] Mbeki, who thoroughly confused the issue by embracing quack theories that HIV was not to blame. International ridicule has forced Mbeki to keep quiet, and the government reorganized its anti-AIDS programs to give them greater focus, but the infection rate is still rising."

"...AIDS activists want the government to provide anti- retroviral drugs - so successful in the West among adults with AIDS - to women in labor so that half these new [mother-to- baby] AIDS infections could be prevented. The government, pleading poverty, refused to do so... and the activists have gone to court to compel the government to act. The activists won the lawsuit this month, but the government will appeal."

"...The Mbeki government, by refusing to distribute the drugs, is denying protection to the most vulnerable part of the population. It is causing a split in the anti-AIDS coalition, which ought to be figuring out how to get the word out to the mass of black people, most of them poor, where HIV infections are most prevalent."

"...What resonates [in the big cities] may not have impact among the rural residents of the black homelands or the mass of migrant workers, barely literate and often from other nations, some of whom believe that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. Reducing the rate of HIV infections will require a national campaign, headed by the political leadership of the state...."

"Early this month, on International AIDS Day, Nelson Mandela said: 'It is countries where the president takes the lead which succeed in reducing the level of HIV/AIDS... Heads of state of those countries are seen moving around the country picking up children with HIV/AIDS and embarking on a lot of initiatives which makes people feel there is no stigma attached.'

"... Mbeki, who spent his life fighting apartheid, was ill prepared to deal with a public health crisis. But with the prospect of millions of AIDS deaths over the next decade, he must meet it forthrightly, based on the most reliable scientific evidence. Otherwise his presidency will be judged a failure."
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