Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - Thursday, December 19, 2002
Manoah Esipisu
In a policy shift after what critics say has been years of neglect, the ANC said it was readying a comprehensive battle plan to take on the disease already ravaging the country.
"Given the progression of the AIDS epidemic...our program of transformation should not only acknowledge this danger, but it must also put the campaign against it at the top of our agenda," the ANC said in a statement on its development strategy issued at a party conference in the university town of Stellenbosch.
The ANC's move follows mounting international criticism of South Africa's official response to AIDS, which now infects almost five million South Africans, or one in nine people in the country.
President Thabo Mbeki has come in for particularly sharp criticism after he publicly questioned the scientific link between HIV and AIDS.
Mbeki, elected to lead the ANC for another five years this week, made only passing reference to AIDS during his keynote address to the conference Monday, and later suggested that tuberculosis was currently probably a more serious problem.
But Joel Netshitenzhe, chief government spokesman and ANC strategist, told reporters Thursday the ANC now recognized that AIDS had ballooned into a huge problem since its last party conference in 1997, and was ready to deal with it.
Netshitenzhe said the ANC would have an "appropriate resolution" on the subject, including details on how the ANC wanted to confront the disease, when its conference closes on Friday.
DRUGS AND POVERTY
ANC Secretary-General Kgolema Motlanthe told Reuters the party envisioned a multiple strategy, including provision of anti-AIDS drugs and reducing poverty to improve overall health.
The ANC, which under Nelson Mandela led South Africa to democracy from apartheid in 1994, has previously identified the fight against poverty and the struggle to rectify racial imbalances as its key development objectives.
But AIDS has become increasingly visible as a social, political and economic problem in South Africa, which currently has the highest single-country caseload in the world.
The government has dragged its heels on offering anti-retroviral drugs through public hospitals, saying they are unproven, expensive and toxic.
But there have been signs that this policy may be reconsidered following pilot programs that have shown how dramatically such drugs can improve the health of AIDS patients.
Despite the ANC's promise of a new stance on AIDS, there were signs that old habits die hard.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, long a target of AIDS activists, was fighting off fresh criticism Thursday after Britain's Guardian newspaper quoted her as saying that South Africa could not afford anti-AIDS drugs because it needed to spend the money to defend itself against potential aggressors including the United States.
Thursday, Tshabalala-Msimang vehemently rejected the report as "bizarre" and "distorted," saying at no time had she suggested that the US could invade South Africa.
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