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“Health minister

Manto

Tshabalala-

Msimang has

extolled the

 virtues of 

 beetroot, lemon

 juice and garlic in

fighting AIDS”

Published online 3 November 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news061030-13

Column

Finally: hints of HIV turnaround in South Africa

It's about time that this country hard-hit by AIDS promised help for

the afflicted, says Apoorva Mandavilli.

 Apoorva Mandavilli

HIV causes AIDS. That's not news to you or me, but shockingly it has taken years for the

government in South Africa — where about 1,000 people die of AIDS every day — to acknowledge

that fact and pledge to provide medicines.

In the past few weeks, the country's deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has publicly promised to expand access to AIDS tests, antiretroviral drugs and prevention programmes to those

who most need them.

That sounds sensible — if a rather obvious thing for a politician to say — but it's a far cry from

what South Africans had heard until recently.

Health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has extolled the virtues of beetroot, lemon juice and

garlic in fighting AIDS. At the international AIDS conference in Toronto this August, her booth

prominently featured those items. Six years earlier, at the same conference in Durban, President

Thabo Mbeki said he didn't know anyone with AIDS and questioned its link to HIV.

It's about time the government changed its tune. As the richest country in

 Africa, South Africa is in a much better position to combat AIDS than its

poorer neighbours. But thanks to the government's appalling neglect, it

hasn't seen any decline in the rate of new infections.

Obvious problem

There are an estimated 5.4 million infected people in the country, more

than in any other except India. When I visited South Africa in February,

 AIDS was everywhere, and I couldn't fathom how Mbeki, Tshabalala-

Msimang or anyone else could look the other way.

Whatever Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang still believe, a few brave souls have at least made it

impossible for them to say it in public without being ridiculed.

The United Nations has never taken South Africa to task, but at the Toronto conference the

delightfully outspoken Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for HIV and AIDS in Africa, called the

 

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government's theories "more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate

state."

Three weeks after the conference ended, 81 prominent researchers, including Nobel laureate David

Baltimore, called on Mbeki to fire Tshabalala-Msimang.

That hasn't happened, but it is surely a positive sign that Mlambo-Ngcuka seems to have replaced

Tshabalala-Msimang as the government's AIDS chief.

Is it possible that these are just idle statements? Sure,

but I'd like to believe these sentiments are sincere. A 

few weeks ago, the country also hosted an emergency 

meeting on a deadly new strain of tuberculosis—

another sign that the government is beginning to

realize it simply cannot continue to look away.

Only 200,000 South Africans, a quarter of the

estimated 800,000 in need, receive antiretroviraldrugs. Hopefully that number will now rise rapidly and

South Africans will get the medicines — and support —

they so desperately need.

Visit our hintsof hivturnaroun.html">newsblog

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