Mbeki defiant about South African HIV/AIDS strategy

Abstract

During the XIIIth International AIDS Conference in South Africa President Thabo Mbeki used his opening address to compare the campaign against AIDS with the struggle against apartheid. He emphasized that the worlds biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill health and suffering across the world is extreme poverty. However several arguments were presented by the audience. Jerry Coovadia conference chairman noted that although poverty exacerbated HIV/AIDS it was not the basic cause of the epidemic. In addition Justice Edwin Cameroon a South African High Court judge argued that the government has mismanaged the epidemic. He spoke of governmental ineptitude the little progress it had made and Mbekis intractably puzzling association with AIDS dissidents. In a review of an appropriate global HIV/AIDS strategy Roy Anderson (Oxford UK) stated his belief that a vaccine remains the only hope for the longer term irrespective of measures to provide antiretroviral drugs control sexually transmissible disease distribute condoms and educate young people about risk.