As 2006 kicks off, it seems a good time to make some new year’s resolutions for fighting HIV/AIDS in South Africa … So here are five we hope our government will make and not break.

1. Mbeki will come out strongly in the fight against HIV/AIDS

President Thabo Mbeki could do worse than announcing that indeed HIV does cause AIDS, that he personally knows someone with HIV/AIDS and that he will fight this pandemic with every resource at his disposal.

The president is well into his second term and his legacy needs some desperate repair work on the HIV/AIDS issue.

2. All South Africans in need of ARVs will receive them

South Africans need a greatly accelerated ARV rollout in 2006. According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate, in June 2005, 866,000 people in South Africa needed anti-retrovirals, but only 10-14% (97,000-138,000) were actually receiving ARV treatment. South Africa is rated by the WHO as the country with the highest unmet need for antiretroviral treatment in the world.

3.  South Africa will spend its national HIV/AIDS budget

Last year R67.2-million of the 2005 HIV/AIDS budget went unspent. This year, the South African government should seek out every last cent of the available budget to combat HIV/AIDS and then actually spend it. Offering the odd R67.2-million of “spare change” to hard-working NGOs and charity organisations on the frontlines would not hurt either.

4. Manto will send Rath packing  

Many South Africans would like to see our minister of health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, kicking controversial vitamin-pusher Dr Matthias Rath out of the country, or at least disciplining him for running unregistered clinics in the Western Cape, as reported by the Sunday Times last year. Last year, Health-e alleged that it was aware of Rath and his cronies causing the premature deaths of 12 HIV positive patients, by convincing them that anti-retrovirals (ARVs) were toxic and they should dump them in favour of vitamin packages provided by the Rath Foundation. (See Journ-AIDS blog entitled “Mice or humans” for more background information).

Rath has also been a nasty legal irritation for various news agencies – he’s flung lawsuits at Health-e and the Cape Times, among others.

Many people wou ld like Manto to tell Rath to leave the citizens of this country alone. This may be difficult as the minister herself refuses to criticise Rath for leading people in need of ARVs away from them.

“I will only distance myself from Dr Rath if it can be demonstrated that the vitamin supplements that he is prescribing are poisonous for people infected with HIV,” Tshabalala-Msimang told Sapa, last year.

5. The media will up its game in 2006

Journalists had a field day with the antics of Rath, Manto and others in 2005. While encouraging signs of critical media emerged in 2005, we hope 2006 will see the media to tackle issues relating to HIV/AIDS even more critically and more professionally, analysing statistics and political decisions more carefully and telling the stories that HIV/AIDS generates in more compelling ways.

This may force the government into action and help the country to start rebuilding itself into a healthy and confident nation. If all the above were to materialise, 2006 would be a watershed year for recovering lost time and moving forward towards keeping the beautiful people of our nation alive. – Lunga Madlala

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.