Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - August 28, 2005
Brett Horner
Foreign and local surgeons sat in stunned silence as Treatment Action Campaign leader Zachie Achmat and a Durban doctor hauled the government over the coals for what they called "denialism" in treating HIV/Aids.
Halfway through a presentation by Dr Yunus Moosa, head of the infectious diseases unit at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, a slide of a chimpanzee appeared on the giant auditorium screen.
At that point Moosa was criticising the government for procrastination in introducing life-saving antiretroviral medicine. The picture of the ape was accompanied by a speech bubble with the words, "Hmm, is it possible?"
Moosa went on to show that since the government's ARV programme began in April 2004, more than 50000 people had enrolled, and improved blood level tests among those participants showed the treatment was working.
His criticism followed a belligerent speech by Achmat, who launched personal attacks on President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
"The HIV/Aids epidemic in this country may already be beyond control," he told delegates.
Citing surveys which showed HIV infections were increasing - there are now more than six million people in the country with the disease - Achmat referred to what he called a "crisis of prevention, illness, death, governance and, above all, a crisis of leadership".
Achmat said the president had dedicated fewer than 100 words to HIV/Aids in his State of the Nation speech earlier this year. "We have a President who does not have the courage publicly to say that HIV causes Aids," he said.
Achmat saved his criticism of Tshabalala-Msimang for last: "Our Health minister studied party loyalty in Leningrad rather than medicine."
This week the minister's spokesman, Sibani Mngadi, said Achmat's criticism was "misguided". "The minister, like other freedom fighters, qualified through that curriculum, which was one of the best in the world at that time, and we are not apologising for ... the politics of liberation which the minister was involved in."
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