S.Africa’s Mbeki vows AIDS action critics persist

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South African President Thabo Mbeki vowed Friday to step up the battle against HIV/AIDS, saying his government’s program is among the world’s best.

But critics said his pledge fell far short of what is required to stem the disease that affects more in South Africa than in any other nation.

South Africa has so far only succeeded in reaching half of those to whom it has promised life-prolonging AIDS drugs, blaming medical staff shortages, problems with drug supplies and other factors.

Mbeki devoted no more than a few lines of Friday’s 19-page state of the nation speech to the pandemic, saying his government’s AIDS plan was “among the best in the world” and “being implemented with greater vigor.”

But AIDS group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said Mbeki’s statements lacked details and showed a lack of commitment to tackling a scourge his predecessor, anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, called the greatest threat facing the nation.

Around 5.3 million of South Africa’s 45 million people are infected with HIV.

“People out there need information, they need to know at which hospitals, which clinics to access ARVs (antiretroviral drugs),” TAC spokeswoman Thembeka Majali told the South African Press Association.

The TAC said Thursday it would march to parliament on February 16 to demand that 200,000 people be put on treatment by the start of next year.

“It is as if he (Mbeki) lives in a different (South Africa) from the millions of people suffering and dying from HIV/AIDS,” said the KwaZulu-Natal-based opposition Inkatha Freedom Party, whose leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi has lost two children to AIDS.

The government has in the past often been blamed for being sluggish in its response to the disease.

After massive public pressure, the government announced plans in 2003 to roll out antiretroviral treatment to HIV-positive South Africans. But the program has hardly made a dent in the number with AIDS—estimated at around 400,000—who urgently need ARVs to stay alive.

Officials initially vowed to have 53,000 patients on treatment by March 2004 but only about 20,000 have been reached.

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