S. Africa Admits: We’ve Done A Lousy Job Fighting AIDS
For years, South Africa's leaders mismanaged the AIDS crisis there, denying that HIV was the cause of AIDS, prescribing concoctions such as beetroot, garlic, olive oil, and lemon in place of anti-retrovirals made in the West for the treatment of AIDS patients, and failing to implement strategies that may have curbed the AIDS epidemic.
The current reality after such missteps is that South Africa has suffered more from the AIDS epidemic than any other country in the world.
A series of studies on the failed health policies pursued by South Africa in the past was posted by U.K. medical journal The Lancet, which noted that in addition to a high rate of HIV/AIDS, many South Africans also suffer from tuberculosis.
The response from South Africa's new leadership, reported The New York Times in an Aug. 24 article, has been to acknowledge the mistakes of the past and look forward to improved management of the health crisis.
"We do take responsibility for what has happened and responsibility for how we move forward," the article quoted Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi, the new South African Minister of Health.
"I am feeling quite at home and comfortable with this Lancet report," added Dr. Motsoaledi.
The New York Times noted that infant mortality rates have actually gone up in South Africa, unlike most of the rest of the world, in part because the former South African government was slow to make drugs available to mothers.
But by redressing that, the article reported, as man as 37,000 infants might be spared transmission of the virus over the next six years, according to researchers.
Newly-elected President Jacob Zuma is seen as far more open to medical science with regard to the epidemic than was Thabo Mbeki, who denied that AIDS--the syndrome in which the body's natural immune defenses are lost and the body is infected by opportunistic pathogens--was the result of a virus, HIV, which destroys T-cells, a vital part of the human immune system.
Worse was the government's position on life-saving medication which was denounced, ostensibly due to its Western provenance: former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang claimed that anti-retrovirals, which keep HIV in check and allow the immune system to keep fuctioning, were "poison" created by the West, and prescribed a mixture of beetroot, olive oil, lemon, and garlic as a natural cure.
Mbeki was eventually pressed into stepping down.
One of the authors of the Lancet's six-part series of papers, Prof. Salim S. Abdool Karim, was quoted as saying, "South Africa is this great paradox of excellent policies. The problem is they can't implement them."
Due to government mismanagement of the situation, the authors of the papers lamented, an opportunity to stem the tide of rising infection rates early on "was irretrievably lost," noted the article.
Among other strategies, the article noted, is a push to circumcise African men; studies have shown that heterosexual men may benefit from a decreased risk of HIV transmission during sex with female partners, which is the principle means of infection in South Africa.
However, studies have not shown a similar benefit to accrue to men who have sex with other men (MSMs).
Even so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reportedly has prepared a recommendation that circumcision be routinely adopted for make newborns in the U.S.
Studies have also indicated that circumcision may reduce the risk of transmission of other STDs, such as herpes and the human papillomavirus, which has been linked to cervical cancer.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, addressed an audience at the 2009 National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in which Sebelius noted that the united States had helped play a part in reducing HIV/AIDS in Africa, but that American infection rates had not decreased.
Sebelius outlined plans for a new campaign to increase awareness, de-stigmatize testing, and continue research and support services.