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Treat patients or face disaster, warns expert
Patrick Leeman. The Mercury. 07 November 2002. Republished courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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The R800-million which was awarded to KwaZulu-Natal by the United Nations global fund to fight HIV./AIDS and is now the subject of a dispute, must be given to the province, said HIV/AIDS expert Alan Whiteside.
Whiteside, director of Health Economics and the HIV/AIDS Research division of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, used the delivery of his inaugural lecture at the campus this week to add his voice to the ongoing dispute over the crucial HIV/AIDS funds.
He said the R800-million grant could enable the province to become the "showcase" in Southern Africa for how to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Whiteside said the health authorities would have to include the provision of anti-retroviral treatment in the care of people with HIV/AIDS.
Highlighting the urgency of the situation, the world-acknowledged authority said HIV/AIDS represented the biggest single challenge to the African subcontinent.
"It threatens our future and, possibly, our very survival," he said. "So far our response has been late, slow and woefully inadequate."
It was not only Southern Africa which was threatened, said Whiteside.
"In West Africa the scale of the epidemic is daunting.
Nigeria already has three times more people living with HIV/AIDS than the entire population of Botswana."
Whiteside said he welcomed the ending of conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Angola.
However, the return of refugees, demobilised soldiers and reconstruction might lead to mobility, thus to the spread of HIV/AIDS in those countries and adjoining states.
He said the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa was still largely hidden. Because of the long incubation period, the country would see very many more HIV/AIDS cases in five or six years.
"This will happen unless there are dramatic changes in the availability, efficacy and cost of treatment," said Whiteside.
He said infant mortality rates in Africa were rising as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Infant mortality, in turn, was a predictor of state failure.
Whiteside said the population of South Africa, and especially of KwaZulu-Natal, could not act as though they were inhabitants of a medieval city-state and exclude those who were sick or poor.
"We must recognise that human beings have rights," he said.
"We are all human and the HIV/AIDS epidemic affects us all in the end." |
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