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MRC head slated on Aids stats
10/02/2005 17:13 - (SA)
Cape Town - A senior University of Cape Town academic has accused the head of the Medical Research Council of providing ammunition to Aids dissenters and of bowing to "political considerations".
Solly Benatar, professor of medicine and director of UCT's bioethics centre, was commenting on a statement in which, he said, MRC interim president Anthony MBewu last week endorsed death-certificate data as reliably depicting the true cause of death and the burden of disease in many countries.
MBewu's statement was issued in the wake of a new row about South Africa's official Aids statistics, which critics say underestimate the disease as a cause of death.
Benatar said in a letter published in a Cape Town newspaper on Thursday: "Whatever his motives may be, MBewu's statement serves to support attitudes of denial towards the causal relationship between HIV and Aids.
"The statement may mislead the public at large and please those politicians who continue to contribute to obfuscation about the HIV/Aids pandemic."
Reluctant to acknowledge Aids
He said MBewu failed to acknowledge the fact that death certificates were "generally less reliable" than was desirable.
Because of the ethical duty to preserve confidentiality, many doctors were reluctant to list HIV/Aids on a death certificate.
"As it is the infectious complications (pneumonia, tuberculosis, meningitis, diarrhoea and so on), arising as a consequence of immune system destruction by HIV infection, that are the immediate causes of death, it is these conditions that are, on balance, reasonably listed as the causes of death."
Unless these Aids-related causes of death were acknowledged, mortality from HIV/Aids would continue to be greatly underestimated, and efforts to contain the pandemic would be impeded - costing many lives.
"The position of president of the MRC is an important one and carries with it the responsibility not to place political considerations above scientific integrity, and to ensure high ethical standards in communicating important health matters to the public," said Benatar.
- SAPA
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