Govt clarifies Mbeki's statement on HIV/AIDS

The South African government has moved to diffuse the controversy sparked by comments President Thabo Mbeki reportedly made to the Washington Post that he knew nobody who had died of AIDS, nor anyone who was HIV positive. The Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) released a statement on behalf of the presidency in a bid to "clarify" Mbeki's comments and "put the record straight". GCIS said that at the end of the recent interview with the Washington Post, "the president agreed to being asked a personal question, which was whether he knew of anyone in his family or amongst his close associates who had died of AIDS or was infected by HIV". Mbeki's response was that he did not. The published article caused a storm in South Africa, where Mbeki's views on HIV/AIDS have been hotly debated. GCIS pointed out, however, that "it was these questions specifically about people close to him that the president answered and his negative replies do not support any broader interpretation that some media have given them". "It should also be remembered that the health status of individuals, as well as causes of death, are personal matters on which people do not have to declare to the president," GCIS added. The statement noted that in the same interview President Mbeki confirmed that the South African national task team charged with preparing an operational plan on public sector anti-retroviral therapy was "within days of completing its work". "In presenting his report to the UN General Assembly Special Session, Secretary-General Kofi Annan singled out South Africa for tripling its resource allocation for HIV/AIDS programmes since the adoption of the UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS in 2001," GCIS pointed out. The article and subsequent furore elicited by it were "red herrings" which threatened to divert attention from the "real issues ... at a time when we are making progress in combating HIV/AIDS", the statement added. "We would expect that opposition parties would seek to distort and create doubt, but we don't expect that of the media," GCIS said. UNAIDS estimates that 20.1 percent of adults aged between 15 and 49 in South Africa are currently living with HIV/AIDS.