No Immediate Changes Planned to South Africa's AIDS Policy, Says Mbeki

In a statement before Parliament on Wednesday, President Thabo Mbeki said South Africa has no immediate plans to adjust its program of fighting AIDS or to put more money into efforts to stop the disease. The statement came a week after a controversial study by the highly respected Medical Research Council indicated that 7 million South Africans could die of the disease by 2010 if more is not done to fight the epidemic.

According to Mbeki, the study, which said about 40 percent of adult deaths last year were AIDS-related, was being evaluated by a government taskforce. "We are not considering any reapportionment of funding until this process is complete," Mbeki said. In August, he wrote a letter asking the health department to review spending on AIDS in light of 1995 World Health Organization figures, found on the Internet, which showed that 2.2 percent of South African deaths were caused by AIDS. In light of these figures, Mbeki said all statistics had to be taken into consideration to find the true incidence of the disease.

Tony Leon, leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, said updated figures from WHO and UNAIDS indicated that the disease killed 250,000 South Africans in 1999, making it the country's biggest killer. Just 0.6 percent of the health budget was spent on AIDS, complained Leon.

Patricia de Lille, a lawmaker from the opposition Pan Africanist Congress, criticized government officials who refuse to provide AIDS drugs because they claim they are toxic. Noting that many lawmakers themselves were taking the drugs and that the drugs have been approved for use in South Africa, de Lille asked, "Why are these drugs only toxic for poor people?" Current government guidelines recommend the drugs not be prescribed until patients are sick, to spare them needless side effects.

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