National

De Klerk criticised over Aids

Health minister responds to 'disturbing remarks' made by former president

October 06, 2004 Edition 1

Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has accused former president F W de Klerk and his government of not responding adequately to HIV and Aids when they were in power.

The ANC-led government was concerned about the "disturbing remarks" made at the weekend by De Klerk about South Africa's programme on HIV/Aids, she said yesterday.

De Klerk was quoted in the media as saying the ANC-led government lost years in the fight against Aids by not implementing a plan drawn up by the former health minister in his government on the issue.

"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," De Klerk was quoted as telling a group of pharmaceutical wholesalers.

"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 did not detail what the plan might have been.

Tshabalala-Msimang said Aids had been a global challenge since it was discovered in the 1980s.

"De Klerk and the apartheid government failed to take meaningful action to respond to this challenge," she said.

"The ANC and other organisations outside of government had to lead many efforts in responding to the rapid spread of HIV infection in the early 1990s, with Nelson Mandela launching the main programme in 1992."

The "limited interventions" made by De Klerk's government were not only ineffective, but contributed to perpetrating negative stereotypes and stigma around HIV and Aids.

"Apartheid's campaigns portrayed HIV and Aids as a deadly condition associated with improper or unfaithful sexual behaviour.

"It was a black man's disease with images of people being buried in black coffins because they had Aids.

"It was only after 1994 that tangible efforts were made by the government to curb the spread of HIV infection; provide treatment, care, and support for those infected and affected; and address the stigma associated with HIV and Aids," Tshabalala-Msimang said.

De Klerk noted that few people in South Africa in the 1980s had imagined the toll that Aids would take on the country.

"The disease has already reduced life expectation from 63 years in 1990 to only 47 now," De Klerk said, adding that an estimated 5,6-million South Africans, or 28% of the country's sexually active population, were HIV positive.

"Many of these people will die within the next 10 years and will leave behind them more than a million orphans," he said.

The government has been repeatedly accused of doing too little to fight the epidemic.

After years of protests by Aids activists and warning by doctors, the government announced last year it would drop its long opposition to life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs in the public sector and begin making them available to the sick and the dying.

But the rollout of the public drug programme has been slow, with a shortage of drugs and poor infrastructure hampering distribution - leading to fresh charges by activists that the government is still not serious about fighting the epidemic. - Sapa and Reuters