Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Sunday, Sept. 10, 2000
In the interview, conducted earlier this month in Pretoria, President Thabo Mbeki was asked whether there was a link between HIV and AIDS.
"This is precisely where the problem starts. No, I am saying that you cannot attribute immune deficiency solely and exclusively to a virus," he was quoted as saying.
There is "a whole variety of things (that) can cause the immune system to collapse," he said.
He cited endemic poverty, malnutrition, contaminated water, and repeated infections of malaria or sexually transmitted diseases as conditions resulting in immune deficiency.
"Now it is perfectly possible that among those things is a particular virus. But the notion that immune deficiency is only acquired from a singe virus cannot be sustained. The problem is that once you say immune deficiency is acquired from that virus your response will be anti-retroviral drugs," Mbeki was quoted as saying.
"But to say this is the sole cause therefore the only response to it is anti-retroviral drugs, I am saying we'll never be able to solve the AIDS problem," he added in the interview, which was available Sunday on the Internet.
Mbeki has been strongly criticized for his government's AIDS policies and for including people who reject the widely accepted notion that HIV causes AIDS on a panel established to advise him on dealing with the pandemic. About 4.2 million South Africans -- roughly 10 percent of the population -- are HIV positive.
The South African debate flared in the past week after Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang sent provincial health ministers a document claiming that an international conspiracy, which included aliens, introduced AIDS in Africa to reduce its population.
Tshabalala-Msimang' spokeswoman Patricia Lambert said it was routine to distribute the document, which was a chapter of a book by William Cooper that had been sent to the minister anonymously, adding that the distribution did not mean the minister agreed with the content, the South African Press Association reported.
The government has also been criticized for refusing to give anti-retroviral drugs to pregnant HIV positive women.
South Africa's largest labor federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions -- a close ally of Mbeki's African National Congress party -- plans to debate a resolution pressing Mbeki to provide HIV-positive pregnant women with anti-retroviral drugs, the Mail and Guardian reported Friday.
The resolution, already adopted by three large unions and to be debated at the federation's national congress next week, calls for the government "to end its scientific speculation in order to concentration on education, prevention and treatment."
"We believe that HIV causes AIDS, and that's not disputable," union President Willie Madisha was quoted as saying.
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