Government pressured to review HIV/AIDS communication strategy

In a response to the recent barrage of criticisms directed at its HIV/AIDS policies, the South African government announced plans yesterday to set up a task team to review its HIV/AIDS communication strategy.

A number of prominent speakers at the recent International AIDS Conference in Toronto lambasted Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and President Thabo Mbeki for displaying a lack of leadership and committment to addressing South Africa's HIV/AIDS crisis.

Stephen Lewis, the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, noted that South Africa was the only country on the continent whose government remained "obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment".

He also singled out the South African government for promoting theories about the virus "more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state".

The South African government has rejected the criticisms as false but in a statement reported on Friday in a Johannesburg newspaper, The Star, chief government spokesperson Themba Maseko said "the cabinet decided that work should be done, locally and abroad, to enhance understanding of our comprehensive HIV/AIDS programme to address any doubts about the government's commitment to the fight against HIV/AIDS."

While no direct reference was made to Tshabalala-Msimang's controversial focus on nutrition and traditional medicines over antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, Maseko acknowledged the cabinet's responsibility "to find a better way of communicating the strategy, so that we are not seen to be over-emphasising one aspect and not highlighting the overall comprehensive strategy we are adopting."

The announcement coincided with a global day of action by local AIDS activist group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), whose supporters marched on provincial legislatures and health departments around the country, as well as on Mbeki's Pretoria office, where they presented a list of demands relating to the government's HIV/AIDS policies.

Partner organisations presented the same list to South African embassies in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, China and Brazil.

The demands included a call for Tshabalala-Msimang's resignation, and urged the government to develop short- and long-term plans to deal with the underlying drivers of the HIV epidemic, which it listed as "the crises of governance, social security, gender inequality and violence."

The memorandum called for a national meeting to discuss implementation of these plans, to "put an end to the unnecessary conflict surrounding HIV/AIDS in South Africa."

"There's obviously been a problem with communication, but it's also implementation," TAC General Secretary Sipho Mthathi told PlusNews.

"There's been a dragging of feet and a dilatory approach. The comprehensive plan on its own is not enough. There are socioeconomic interventions that we need to be implementing; we need to look at the levels of poverty that are being created by the epidemic."

She pointed out that the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) has only met twice so far this year, and a prevention plan has not been drawn up.

According to new research released this week by a leading AIDS insurance risk consultant, Nathea Nicolay, and reported by Reuters, about 947 South Africans die from AIDS-related deaths every day, while 1,443 become newly infected with HIV.

Around 220,000 people (140,000 of them in the public sector) receive antiretroviral treatment, but about 700,000 are in need of it.

Nicolay's company, Metropolitan Employee Benefits, has projected best- and worst-case scenarios for South Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic: worst-case estimated 8.7 million new HIV infections by 2025.

She emphasised that most of these infections and millions of deaths could be averted if government and business coordinated their responses to treatment and prevention.