Countries in the region must acknowledge AIDS

South African deputy president Jacob Zuma, has called on southern African countries to stop thinking of HIV/AIDS as a “foreign” disease, and to accept that “the witch is in the home,” media reports said on Friday.

Zuma was addressing a two-day meeting of health ministers and officials from the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The deputy president said that there has been a tendency in the region to deny the existence of HIV/AIDS. “In our quest to escape the reality of the disease and the gravity of the situation, we have developed euphemisms that we use when referring to people who suffer from or have died of AIDS,” he said.

“We will not succeed in fighting this disease for as long as we refuse to accept reality. We will continue to perish in even larger numbers,” he added. Zuma reminded the group that the spread of HIV/AIDS was threatening the development of the region, because it affected the most economically active part of the population, those aged between 15 and 40. “Nations that are ravaged by AIDS produce at a fraction of their potential,” he said.