Study Details Human Cost of S. Africa President's AIDS Denial

A study recently completed by researchers at Harvard University has determined that the cost of denial about the HIV pandemic in South Africa has cost that country the lives of over 300,000 of its people.

Furthermore, the study indicates that a lack of leadership on the issue reached all the way to the presidency of South Africa, with former president Thabo Mbeki buying into the view promoted by AIDS deniers, and leading to a catastrophic failure to provide medications to combat the spread of the disease.

The New York Times published a Nov. 25 article that recalled that the South African Health Minister under Mbeki, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, had prescribed a concoction of beet root, lemon juice, and garlic as a cure for the disease, which has ravaged South Africa.

The country's new president, Kgalema Motlanthe, appointed Barbara Hogan to the office of Health Minister upon replacing Mbeki as president in September, the article said.

Hogan acknowledged the new report's findings, saying, "I feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying."

Added Hogan, "The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa," the article said.

The New York Times reported that the new study shows that the AIDS epidemic was at about the same scale in South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia around the turn of the century, but because the other nations took effective action against the disease--which is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which can be treated with antiretroviral medications--South Africa quickly saw the epidemic claim more lives than in its neighbors.

The estimated 365,000 people who subsequently died in South Africa represent a loss of 3.8 million man-years of life, the article reported.

Though the numbers are high, they are actually on the conservative side, the New York Times said, quoting Berkeley School of Public Health professor of epidemiology James Chin.

Said the professor, "They have truly used conservative estimates for their calculations, and I would consider their numbers quite reasonable."

The Berkeley School of Public Health is part of the University of California.

The article also contained a quote from Harvard School of Public Health virologist Max Essex, who called the South African government's response to the pandemic "a case of bad, or even evil, public health."

Former president Mbeki has not issued any statement on the policies his administration maintained toward AIDS.

Currently, the AIDS crisis is more marked and more severe in South Africa than anywhere else on Earth, with nearly 6 million people living with HIV/AIDS.

An estimate from the United Nations says that over 900 patients die of AIDS daily in South Africa, the article reported.

The article related that Mbeki was swayed by a tiny minority of scientists who refused to accept that AIDS is caused by a virus, despite overwhelming factual evidence.

The New York Times referred to an interview in which ANC party official Ngoako Ramatlhodi described sending a letter to Prof. Malegapuru Makgoba, a scientist critical of Mbeki's policies. The letter had originated in Mbeki's office, and characterized Makgoba's criticisms of Mbeki as upholding racist notions from the West about Africans.

Other sources pinpointed writings that influenced Mbeki, and that shared that view, saying that while HIV might be a possible cause of AIDS, there were other factors involved as well, including a lack of adequate food. Those writings also charged that the antiretrovirals that scientists and Western governments advised be used were poisonous, and that the medications were only being touted as a way for entities such as drug companies to make money.

The writings declared that Western governments were falling back on stereotypes of Africans as sexually over-active; read one document in part, "Yes, we are sex crazy!" the New York Times article reported.

That document continued angrily, "Yes, we are diseased! Yes, we spread the deadly H.I. virus through our uncontrolled heterosexual sex!"

The South African courts ruled in 2002 that the government was required to provide medications; the article quoted Randall L. Tobias, who was appointed in 2003 by the Bush Administration to head up a global AIDS initiative, as saying, "We did an enormous amount of good in the early days in South Africa, not because of the Health Ministry, but in spite of the Health Ministry."

The Clinton Administration had also attempted to provide expertise to the Mbeki government, only for a lack of action from the South African leadership to stall American involvement.

The article noted that Jacob Zuma is expected to win the 20009 campaign for the presidency, and recalled Zuma's rape trial in 2006, in which Zuma said that he had protected himself against AIDS by showering after sex. (Zuma was cleared of the charge of rape.)

AIDS leader Ricahrd C. Holbrooke was quoted as saying, "Who would have thought Jacob Zuma would be better than Mbeki, but he is."

Added Holbrooke, "The tragedy of Thabo Mbeki is that he's a smart man who could have been an international statesman on this issue. To this day, you wonder what got into him."