SA's new Aids plan 'good'

2007-08-20 08:08

Johannesburg - The US secretary of health and human services praised South Africa's new national Aids plan on Sunday, but sidestepped questions on the dismissal of the country's deputy health minister who had been a driving force behind the programme.

South Africa "has constructed a good plan," Mike Leavitt said at the start of a visit to South Africa, where nearly 1 000 people die each day of Aids and an additional 1 400 are infected with the Aids virus. "Now it must be executed in a way that makes good on the prospects it offers and the hope it can provide."

Leavitt was on a four-nation tour to highlight US health care programs in Africa with a focus on HIV/Aids and malaria, two of the biggest killers in Africa.

$600m invested

His visit follows President George W Bush's call to Congress to double the initial $15bn funding of the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, or PEPFAR.

The programme helps provide treatment for 1.1 million people worldwide, with more than a million in Africa, but has been criticised for emphasising abstinence and fidelity over the use of condoms in its prevention efforts.

The US has this year invested $600m in South Africa, where an estimated 5.4 million people are infected with the Aids virus, the second highest total in the world after India.

South Africa's five-year plan, launched earlier this year, makes reducing the number of new HIV infections one of its main targets, and aims to extend treatment to 80% of those with Aids by 2011.

There is concern that implementation of the plan is under threat after President Thabo Mbeki - who has long been accused of playing down the Aids epidemic - fired Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge as deputy health minister.

Madlala-Routledge had won widespread praise for her work in drawing up the plan.

Results would follow

Leavitt would not comment on the matter, but warned that "any country that does not aggressively move" to address the epidemic "will bear the unhappy results."

Briefing reporters, he said he would not be meeting with Tshabalala-Msimang as he had been informed she would be out the country, and instead would meet with the minister for social development and officials from the health department.

An estimated 1 400 people are newly infected in South Africa each day, and the government has raised concerns about the increasing costs of anti-retroviral drugs.

Leavitt and his team said the United States was also involved in a few programmes that encourage male circumcision following research that shows that practice reduces the risk of female-to-male transmission of HIV by around 60%.

"As a tool of prevention it is of some benefit," said Dr Julie Gerberding, director of the Atlanta-based Centres for Disease Control. "But it is not a magic bullet."

- AP