Labour urged to demand sacking of health minister

A leading AIDS activist caused a stir by demanding the South African health minister's removal in the presence of the deputy president at a conference on Tuesday.

"Our government has failed us. We must speak the truth. We are willing to work with you [the government] anytime; you have ignored our letters; you have not spoken to us, but we are ready to talk," Zackie Achmat, leader of the AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) told Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at a conference of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) outside Johannesburg.

He urged COSATU, the largest labour organisation, to support his call for the dismissal of minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, perceived as an AIDS dissident.

But his demand was met with a deafening silence at the session devoted to the pandemic; "I think people were too shocked to respond," said a delegate.

TAC has long been at loggerheads with Tshabalala-Msimang. She and President Thabo Mbeki have drawn international criticism for seemingly to under sell antiretrovirals (ARVs) in the treatment of HIV/AIDS.

Achmat had the delegates on his side when he commented on Mlambo-Ngcuka's attempts to make the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) more effective.

"We want SANAC to work on the basis of law, not on the whim of the minister [Tshabalala-Msimang]. We want a report every week to our president on the number of people who are infected [with HIV], and how many people are on treatment," he said as delegates roared their approval.

Mlambo-Ngucka sought to distance the government from the AIDS dissidents and in a significant turnaround acknowledged that a sharp increase in the number of deaths among young adults was "plausibly explained only by an increase in AIDS-related deaths".

Adopting a conciliatory tone she said, "There are difficulties and misunderstandings that we need to deal with to improve the climate for practical joint action, and all of us owe it to our nation to do so."

The deputy president also emphasised that a "healthy lifestyle and good nutrition" were not alternatives to treatment.

Tshabalala-Msimang, who had often highlighted the importance of nutrition over antiretrovirals in treating people with HIV/AIDS, attempted to set the record straight in a statement by her spokesman, Sibani Mngadi.

"The ministry reiterates its position that nutrition is not an alternative to treatment. Antiretroviral drugs can prolong lives of those with full-blown AIDS, and the department of health is making these drugs available in at least 231 health facilities in the country."

COSATU president Willie Madisha urged the government to scale up the national response to the pandemic by setting a target of having at least 800,000 people on ARVs by 2008.

A study by the University of Cape Town's Centre for Social Science Research showed that at the end of 2005 an estimated 194,000 people were accessing anti-AIDS drugs in South Africa, of which only 57.8 percent were obtaining them from the public sector.

An estimated 5.5 million of South Africa's 47 million people are living with the HI virus.

jk/he/oa