DA to court over Aids report

2004-09-21 15:22

Cape Town - The Democratic Alliance has applied, in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act, for the release of the HIV/Aids and Syphilis Sero-prevalence Report for 2003.

The report should have been made available to the public in March this year, DA health spokesperson Ryan Coetzee said on Tuesday.

"The Annual HIV/Aids and Syphilis Sero-prevalence Report is a critical tool for analysing the spread of Aids and the effectiveness of prevention measures. It provides the most detailed and comprehensive information available on infection rates across the country," he said.

The statistics for the report were gathered in October of every year and submitted to the health minister early in the following year.

However, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang seemed to be "increasingly reluctant" to share the information with the public, and she released the report later and later every year, he said.

The 2000 report was released on March 19, 2001; the 2001 report on June 9 2002; the 2002 report on September 9 2003, and the 2003 report had yet to be released.

"So the information for 2003 is already nearly a year out of date, and therefore virtually useless to anyone who needs current information.

"Aids is undoubtedly South Africa's top health priority. Figures produced by the Bureau of Market Research at Unisa this week show that five million South Africans could die of Aids by 2011.

"If South Africa is going to contain this epidemic, it needs a minister of health who will take it seriously," Coetzee said.

- SAPA