Manto rolls out 'Aids mantra'
2005-06-07 22:01
Special Report
The South African government has announced a joint venture to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral drugs with a Swiss company.
Durban - South Africa's health minister told a delegates to a national Aids conference on Tuesday to focus on the impact of other diseases, such as cancer and diabetes, on the nation's health and restated her view that drugs were not the only answer to fighting HIV.
"I hope you have come in such big numbers not just to focus on one ailment, but to focus on all of them, because many other people are dying of other diseases in this country," said Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang at a media conference on the opening day of the conference.
"Even though it is a conference on HIV and AIDS, you must not forget to talk about cancers, you must not forget to talk about diabetes, you must not forget to talk about other communicable diseases," she said.
Tshabalala-Msimang, who studied medecine in the Soviet Union and in Tanzania, has been advocating her own diet of raw garlic, lemon peel, olive oil and beetroot to fight HIV and openly questioned the use of antiretroviral drugs, citing the negative side-effects.
'Nutrition a key component'
About 4 000 scientists, medical professionals, Aids activists and social workers are attending the four-day conference in Durban.
Tshabalala-Msimang also reiterated her view that ARVs were not the only answer to fighting HIV and that nutrition was a key component in the approach to treatment of the virus, which is the leading cause of death in South Africa, according to the SA Medical Research Council.
Tshabalala-Msimang said: "There is no single clear intervention that can solely solve the challenges of people living with HIV and Aids.
"I know I get attacked if I say it's nutrition OR micro-nutrients OR antiretrovirals and people want me to say, and, and, and. I think we need to give South Africans options," she said.
Call for 200 000 on ARVs by 2006
The health minister has been criticised by Aids activists and health professionals for creating what the Nobel prize-winning organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without borders) has called a "fake polemic" surrounding nutrition and Aids in South Africa.
At least 42 000 South Africans are receiving ARVs under the government's rollout programme, but South Africa's most-influential Aids lobby, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), is urging the government to speed this up to make them available to 200 000 people by 2006.
According to the United Nations Aids agency, 5.3 million people are living with HIV or full-blown Aids in South Africa - an estimated one out of five adults.
- AFP