Impact of HIV/AIDS on women raised at national conference

South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang this week urged the public to focus on diseases other than HIV/AIDS, and reiterated her view that antiretroviral drugs were not the only answer to tackling the AIDS pandemic. However, on Thursday, Prudence Mabela - the first black woman to publicly reveal her HIV status - explained to delegates at the AIDS conference in the east-coast city of Durban why the disease should continue receiving global attention. "Many obstacles are still presented to people trying to access the government's free antiretroviral treatment programme; the lag in treatment targets has also forced those in need of immediate medication to seek alternative means of care, or die trying," Mabela pointed out. As executive director of the NGO, Positive Women's Network (PWN), Mabela recounted her experience of having to witness most of the network's members die of AIDS-related illnesses, and blamed these "unnecessary deaths" on the treatment constraints in the public health sector. "Since 1996, only two of the network's sixty members remain: to see so many of my friends and colleagues die is very demoralising - most of them were waiting for the government rollout to take effect," said Mabela. The South African government is already a few months past its March 2005 deadline of providing anti-AIDS drugs to 53,000 people. At present only 43,000 have access to the free treatment. More than 300,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in South Africa last year, and many more are expected to die in 2005. Mabela related the experience of Jacky Mdlankomo, a PWN member who was on the treatment waiting list for a long time, but with the help of a meagre social security grant, and support from organisations like the Positive Women's Network, she was able to purchase drugs until the government programme was launched. Although there have been some success stories, Mabela argued that much more still needed to be done to address the impact of AIDS in South Africa, particularly on women. "Many of us are susceptible to this virus because we very often find ourselves with no way of negotiating safe sex practices with our male counterparts," Mabela pointed out. In South Africa, more than 2.5 million of the estimated 5.6 million HIV-positive people are women. According to Prof Salim Abdool Kariem, an infectious diseases control epidemiologist at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, the "catastrophic" impact of HIV on South African women put the country in an ideal position to carry some of the weight of ongoing international research into microbicides. Microbicides in a variety forms, including creams, gels and invisible sheaths, are specifically aimed at empowering women against HIV infection, but Kariem expressed concern over the lack of interest and sparse resources being directed into an approach as "promising" as this. "There are no major companies willing to invest in this research - only small biotech concerns. The sad thing is that if this research was for the benefit of men, there would certainly be more interest shown," Kariem told the 2nd South African AIDS conference. He stressed that microbicides were the solution to a "clear and urgent" need for a "woman-controlled" method of HIV prevention.