|
|
 |
Achmat: Stop counterproductive AIDS debate
Barcelona Anso Thom The Star, July 10 2002. Reprinted courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
|
South African HIV/AIDS activist Zackie Achmat has urged the world to immediately lay to rest the counterproductive debate between AIDS prevention or treatment.
Achmat, who is ill and has been advised by his doctor not to travel, addressed the 14th International AIDS Conference via a pre-recorded video message at Wednesday morning's plenary session.
It is critical that every treatment activist also becomes a prevention activist, he said.
"From a purely public health care perspective it is short-sighted not to treat HIV, to say that we must focus on prevention and exclude treatment. On the other hand it is unconscionable, because what we are speaking of are not cold statistics, but our lives.
"Our lives matter, the 5-million people in South Africa with HIV matter and the millions of people throughout the world already infected with HIV, their lives matter."
He said that the South African government's earlier stance on HIV/AIDS was not only scandalous, but it also "reduced many of us to despair, took away the hope of many thousands of people in the country and threw the health care workers and the health system into disarray".
"That position now has fortunately changed." |
| Was this article helpful to you? |
 ?0%???? ?0%
|
|
Back
|
|
|
|
