'ANC lost years in Aids fight'
2004-10-04 17:24
Kleinmond - The African National Congress government lost years in the fight against Aids by shelving a plan drawn up by its apartheid era predecessor, former president FW de Klerk said on Monday.
Aids had been recognised as a problem during his presidency, he told the annual conference of the National Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers at Kleinmond in the southern Cape.
He said that before the first democratic election happened in 1994, his health minister Dr Rina Venter had already drawn up a detailed action plan on the challenge of the disease.
Left on the shelf to gather dust
"That action plan, as [with] so many other good action plans and policy documents, was left on the shelf to gather dust, because understandably, let me say understandably, there was a wish on the side of the ANC to reinvent the wheel.
"Anything which came from the apartheid era was somehow or other contaminated.
"Because of allowing a very good action plan, which was already prepared, to gather dust, we've lost years in the fight against Aids."
De Klerk was head of state from 1989 until the 1994 election, when the ANC took power from his National Party.
More than a million orphans
The ANC government has repeatedly come under fire for what critics say is a slow and even reluctant rollout of Aids-fighting programmes.
De Klerk told the pharmacists that Aids was the most serious problem facing South Africa, and that it had reduced average life expectancy from 63 years during his tenure as head of state to 47 today.
A total of 5.6m South Africans, 28% of the sexually active population, were HIV positive, a situation which would result in more than a million Aids orphans.
- SAPA