JOHANNESBURG, Nov 4 (AFP) - South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Thursday called on southern African countries to stop considering HIV/AIDS as a "foreign" disease, and to accept that "the witch is in the home."

Addressing a two-day meeting of health ministers from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Soweto outside Johannesburg, Zuma said there was a tendency in the region to deny the existence of the HIV/AIDS.

"In our quest to escape the reality of the disease and the gravity of the situation, we have developed euphemisms that we use when referring to people who suffer from or have died from AIDS," he said.

Black people, for example tended to call it "the four-letter disease," Zuma said.

"We will not succeed in fighting this disease for as long as we refuse to accept reality. We will continue to perish in even larger numbers."

But, he said, the people of southern Africa were fortunately beginning to realise the futility of their refusal to confront HIV/AIDS.

"We have now come to accept that 'umthakathi usekhaya'," he said, using a Zulu expression meaning "the witch is in the home."

Zuma reminded the SADC ministers and officials gathered for the conference at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital that the spread of HIV/AIDS was threatening the development of the region as it affected its most economically active people -- those aged between 15 and 40.

"Nations that are ravaged by AIDS produce at a fraction of their potential," he said.

Zuma called on the SADC states to devise regional strategies to fight HIV/AIDS, because "territorial borders are fictitious in the fight against disease."

He suggested that they use a protocol recently signed by South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland to control malaria, as an example.

The conference is meant to give SADC governments an opportunity to gather information on the latest AIDS research and help them shape their national AIDS policies.

Delegates will be briefed on the effectiveness of the new anti-AIDS drug Nevirapine in combatting transmission of the virus from pregnant women to their babies.

The drug is currently being used in medical trials in Uganda and South Africa.

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