TORONTO—South Africa's government remains "obtuse" and "negligent" in its approach to AIDS and should be denounced, researchers and diplomats said on Friday.
Top speakers at the 16th International Conference on AIDS reserved their closing remarks for a long and detailed critique of South Africa and President Thabo Mbeki's government, which at first denied that the human immunodeficiency virus causes AIDS and then resisted offering HIV drugs to its people.
One in nine South Africans is estimated to be infected with the virus, which is incurable and fatal but which can be kept in check by drugs.
"It is the only country in Africa, amongst all the countries I have traversed in the last five years, whose government is still obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment," Stephen Lewis, the U.N. special envoy on AIDS, told the closing session.
"It is the only country in Africa whose government continues to propound theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state."
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has been criticized for promoting traditional cures such as garlic, beetroot and lemon.
"We have waited far too long to make this the crucial issue of this time," agreed Dr. Mark Wainberg, director of the McGill University AIDS Center in Montreal and a conference organizer.
Wainberg also noted that Canada's conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper failed to appear at the meeting, which attracted 24,000 delegates from around the world, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates.
Abysmal Failure
"We as a world have sat back for far too long, watching South Africa continue to deteriorate in terms of thousands of people dying of HIV," Wainberg told a news conference.
"Why it is that a government can continue to remain in power ... despite evidence that it has abysmally failed to deliver all the essentials to its population, I do not understand. It is something that burns a hole through my heart."
The conference highlighted progress in treatment of HIV patients, with more than 1 million people in Africa getting lifesaving drugs. But 76 percent of the world's HIV patients who need HIV drugs still do not receive them, speakers noted.
And new prevention methods including circumcision of men, microbicides for women, and the use of drugs to prevent infection may offer what Gates called a "turning point" in the pandemic but are far from being fully studied or available.
Lewis said a crisis was looming in funding AIDS prevention, research and treatment. Funding was $8.3 billion in 2005, he said -- a huge jump.
"But we need $15 billion this year and $18 billion next year and $22 billion in 2008," he said. "We're billions and billions short of those targets."
Another big problem is a shortage of health care workers in the countries hardest hit by the epidemic. The World Health Organization estimated that more than 4 million health workers are needed across the world to cope with HIV.
"No improvement in financing or medical products can make a lasting difference in people's lives until the crisis in the health workforce is solved," WHO Director-General Dr. Anders Nordstrom told the conference.
Study after study showed that even the poorest and least educated people will take HIV drugs if they can get them, and will stay healthy instead of leaving their children orphaned and economies in tatters.
"AIDS 2006 succeeded in demonstrating that communities across the world are delivering innovative prevention, care and treatment -- and doing it on a shoestring," Oxfam Policy Adviser Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni said in a statement.
But he said rich and poor governments were not doing enough.
"With a few notable exceptions, they are still not putting their full weight behind scaling up the response, rebuilding health systems, and removing barriers to access to medicines," Kamal-Yanni said.
