CAPE TOWN, Feb 16 (AFP) - Some 2,000 AIDS activists Wednesday marched on the South African parliament to urge the government to "wake up" to the pandemic and provide free anti-retroviral drugs to 200,000 people by 2006.
Members from South Africa's influential AIDS lobby group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), shouted slogans demanding free anti-retroviral drugs before handing over a memorandum addressed to President Thabo Mbeki and the country's health minister.
The memorandum said: "We ask you to treat 200,000 people with AIDS using anti-retroviral drugs in the public sector by the beginning of 2006."
Only 20,000 people are on treatment in public clinics and hospitals, according to TAC.
Mbeki last year said some 53,000 people would be receiving free anti-retroviral drugs from 113 state-accredited health centres by March this year but the target is way short.
"There is no decent word said in parliament about the deaths caused by AIDS," said Zackie Achmat, the firebrand chairman of the TAC.
"Our president needs to wake up to AIDS," said Achmat, adding: "We are proud about our ten years of democracy, but if we want our next ten years of democracy to be good we need to wake up to AIDS."
Out of a population of more than 44 million people, an estimated 5.3 million South Africans are HIV-positive and more than 300,000 died from AIDS last year.
Vuyiseka Dubula, an HIV-positive marcher, urged South Africans to undergo voluntary AIDS testing.
"We need to be educated about HIV/AIDS and treatment and it is important for us to test so that we can go on treatment," said Dubula.
South Africa's main opposition Democratic Alliance party has also criticised the government for dragging its feet on AIDS.
"For two years, South Africans have been promised that 53,000 AIDS patients would soon receive anti-retroviral drugs," leader Tony Leon said Tuesday.
"Yet as of December 2004, only 20,000 people were receiving them in public hospitals. Clearly the government is going to miss its March deadline once again," he said.
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