Latest South Africa AIDS Victim Buried

As the South African government debated over the past few weeks just how deadly its HIV crisis is, Francina Mteniso lay in a hospital bed dying of the disease. She was buried Tuesday in a funeral full of tears and prayers, but also full of defiance against what many mourners saw as the government's stubborn unwillingness to come to terms with a crisis that is devastating the country. South Africa's government, which has been criticized for its policies on AIDS, has courted new controversy by declining to release new estimates showing AIDS is the leading cause of death in the country. Instead, the government cast doubt on their accuracy.

The statistics in the report by the Medical Research Council, a government-sponsored research organization, estimated AIDS caused 40 percent of adult deaths and 25 percent of total deaths in South Africa last year. The disease will have killed 5 million to 7 million South Africans by 2010, said the report.

The unreleased report was leaked last month after President Thabo Mbeki ordered a review of health spending on the basis of 1995 statistics showing HIV accounted for just 2.2 percent of South Africa's deaths. Officials of the ruling African National Congress questioned the report's credibility, and several Cabinet ministers issued a statement denying they were suppressing it, saying they did not have the authority to release it.

Because of the stigma, a funeral like Mteniso's is rare. Her yard was jammed with AIDS activists singing songs of mourning. Mteniso, 37, discovered she had HIV in 1990 while she was pregnant. Her baby died of AIDS at seven months. Mteniso, a shy woman, later became an activist with the AIDS Care and Counseling Trust. Mteniso died Sept. 28 and was buried in Soweto's Avalon Cemetery amid rows of graves of people in their 30s, 20s and, in some cases, their infancy. Activists speaking at the funeral blended praises for Mteniso's strength with criticisms of the government, which they are suing to provide medicine for HIV-positive pregnant women that could help prevent their babies from becoming infected.

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