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NEWS
MBEKI DOUBTS HIV LINK

London Sunday Times October 8 2000

AFRICA
ANC elite get Aids drugs as babies are left to die
R W Johnson, Johannesburg ©

LEADING members of South Africa's ruling party who have been infected with HIV are receiving expensive cocktails of anti-viral drugs that are denied to ordinary people, including pregnant women and rape victims.

MPs from the national and provincial legislatures are members of Parmed, a private medical scheme which introduced an "Aid for Aids" provision last July. The clinical guidelines allow HIV-positive MPs and their dependants to be treated with drugs worth up to £3,500.

The Sunday Times has learnt that 68 members of the scheme are already being treated for HIV or Aids. Since two-thirds of all national and provincial legislators are from President Thabo Mbeki's African National Congress (ANC), it can be estimated that about 46 of these sufferers are from the party's ranks.

The contrast between the growing shambles of a public health system facing collapse under the impact of Aids and the care available to a privileged elite could hardly be sharper.

In Soweto's giant Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital - the biggest in the world - half the 2,900 patients are HIV or Aids sufferers.

"We're in danger of just becoming a hospice", said one doctor. "So far we think 500,000 people have died of Aids in South Africa but the forecast is that 10m will die of it by 2015. There's no way we'll cope."

Sarah Chuene, 20, is one of an ever-increasing number of pregnant mothers who discover, on entering hospital to give birth, that they are HIV-positive and that their babies also carry the virus.

"We came to hospital to produce new life, but now we learn we must die soon and our babies even before us," Chuene says sadly.

"Why can't we have these drugs? This is a wicked thing to make our babies die."

There is little doubt that the decision to deny anti-retroviral drugs to rape victims and pregnant mothers stems from Mbeki's persistent questioning of the link between HIV and Aids. A week ago he told the ANC caucus that the world had accepted the conventional wisdom on Aids only because American pharmaceutical companies were "keen on the thesis".

Former President Nelson Mandela, the Constitutional Court and the South African Medical Association all reject Mbeki's stance, but he treats support for his views as a matter of party loyalty.

The discovery that ANC MPs are benefiting from costly anti-retroviral drugs capable of prolonging their lives while others go without has infuriated Tony Leon, the opposition leader.

"Mbeki repeatedly tells us that there are two nations, black and white," he said. "What this shows is that the two nations really are the new elite on the one hand and the impoverished majority on the other."

MONDAY OCTOBER 09 2000

Mbeki allows anti-Aids drug for elite

FROM MICHAEL DYNES IN JOHANNESBURG

PRESIDENT MBEKI faced fresh criticism yesterday after the disclosure that public officials are entitled to receive anti-Aids drugs at the taxpayers' expense.

Mr Mbeki's Government was accused of blatant hypocrisy for allowing public servants to benefit from anti-Aids therapies while refusing HIV-positive pregnant women and rape victims the same treatment.

The revelation comes after reports that Mr Mbeki recently told a closed meeting of the ruling African National Congress that the CIA was part of a "conspiracy" to promote the view that HIV causes Aids.

Mr Mbeki is reported to have told the meeting that the CIA was working covertly alongside the big US pharmaceutical companies to establish a causal relationship between HIV and Aids to boost global drug sales - and discredit him for questioning the Aids orthodoxy.

The Aids controversy erupted earlier this year after Mr Mbeki began to court the views of the so-called Aids dissidents, who deny that HIV causes Aids. South Africa's health workers insist that Mr Mbeki's position is undermining their efforts.

Under the government scheme, Cabinet members, MPs, provincial legislators and senior judges are entitled to receive the anti-Aids drug AZT. Each beneficiary can have up to £3,500 worth of anti-HIV therapy, the South African Sunday Times said.