Ltr to Mbeki: Scientists Blast S.Africa's Health Minister
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Ltr to Mbeki: Scientists Blast S.Africa's Health Minister
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Simon McGuinness
The Independent - 07 September 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article1369595.ece
Scientists condemn Health Minister as 'embarrassment to South Africa'
By Terry Leonard in Johannesburg
More than 80 international scientists and academics have condemned South
Africa's AIDS policies as ineffective and immoral and called for the
dismissal of the country's Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, in
a letter to President Thabo Mbeki.
The scientists called Dr Tshabalala-Msimang an embarrassment to South
Africa and said her activities undermined science. Signatories included
the American scientists David Baltimore, a biologist and Nobel
Prize-winner, and Robert Gallo, a co-discoverer of the HIV virus which
causes AIDS.
They called "for the immediate removal of Dr Tshabalala-Msimang as
Minister of Health and for an end to the disastrous, pseudoscientific
policies that have characterised the South African government's response
to HIV/AIDS".
Dr Tshabalala-Msimang, has been criticised for advising HIV sufferers to
eat beetroot, garlic, lemon and the African potato to stave off AIDS. Mr
Mbeki has also been accused of poor judgement in addressing South
Africa's AIDS epidemic.
The government estimates more than 5.5 million South Africans are HIV
positive. On average, more than 900 people a day die of the disease in
South Africa.
There was no immediate response from South Africa to the letter. But the
government recently defended the Health Minister, saying false
information about the country's treatment programme was being spread
around the world.
The government insists that it is providing more than 140,000 people
with antiretroviral drugs. But the scientists said there were 500,000
South Africans without access to drugs who need them to survive. And
they noted the government estimate was less than half of the target of
380,000 it set in 2003.
Mr Mbeki has expressed doubts about the connection between HIV and AIDS
and about the effectiveness of the antiretroviral drugs.
The scientists said: "To deny that HIV causes AIDS is farcical in the
face of the scientific evidence; to promote ineffective, immoral
policies on HIV/AIDS endangers lives; to have as a health minister a
person who now has no international respect is an embarrassment to the
South African government."
The letter endorsed the views of Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for
AIDS in Africa, who delivered a scathing attack on South Africaat an
AIDS conference in Toronto last month.
*
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