Religious leaders and AIDS activists urge government to declare AIDS national emergency

South African religious leaders and AIDS activists appealed to the government on Thursday to declare the HIV pandemic a national emergency and to provide the leadership needed to fight it. “No one in our country can afford to deny the terrible extent of this epidemic,” the group said in a statement.

The statement was issued by the Anglican Church, the South African Catholic Bishops Conference, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the AIDS activist group the Treatment Action Campaign. They also expressed concerns that the government was trying to downplay an unreleased report by South Africa’s Medical Research Council which estimated that AIDS caused 40 percent of South African deaths last year. AIDS activists have accused the government of suppressing that report, but officials said it needed further study.

“Our clergy report that every week they are burying people who die of AIDS. Young workers are disappearing and dying from ‘natural causes’ in the prime of life, leaving their families behind with no income or support.

Educators and (students) are buried alongside each other,” the statement said. The group called on the government to declare HIV/AIDS a national emergency, to provide moral and political leadership to fight the disease and to increase the health budget to provide cheaper AIDS drugs, better care for the infected and better education.