AIDS researchers from around the world gather in South Africa
Monday amid tentative signs the nation is finally embracing
mainstream approaches to fighting the epidemic.
Hopes of a shift in South Africa's attitude to a disease
affecting nearly 12 percent of its 47 million people have been
building since the government in March unveiled a revamped AIDS
strategy, including an expanded rollout of life-saving drugs.
Anti-retroviral (ARV) medications are credited with drastically
reducing AIDS deaths and are now widely accepted as the frontline
treatment for HIV/AIDS.
But the South African government was a late and reluctant
convert to the ARV camp - experts say it wasted years and lives
questioning the drugs' efficacy and safety, and soliciting the
views of dissident scientists who opposed their use.
President Thabo Mbeki's administration has now changed course,
making ARVs a pillar of its new National Strategic Plan to fight
HIV/AIDS. It envisions a five-fold increase in the number of
HIV-positive people accessing the drugs by 2011.
The result is a slightly more upbeat mood in South Africa, where
5.5 million people are infected with HIV and 1,000 die each day
from AIDS, as activists and scientists convene for the South
African AIDS Conference in Durban from Tuesday to Friday.
It is the third such conference to be held in the nation.
"We are definitely more positive about what is going on," said
Nathan Geffen, policy coordinator for the Treatment Action
Campaign, a South African-based group that campaigns for the rights
of people with HIV/AIDS.
"The adoption of the National Strategic Plan by cabinet is a
watershed, and most of what is needed to deal with the HIV epidemic
is in that plan," said Geffen.
Challenges, solutions
But South Africa's effort to cut new HIV infections and halt the
spread of the virus is threatened by a critical shortage of
healthcare workers, especially in rural areas where nurses often
are the only trained clinicians to treat the sick.
A report released last month by French medical charity Medicins
Sans Frontieres concluded the epidemic could not be stemmed in
South Africa and neighboring countries without a surge in the
number of doctors, nurses and medical assistants.
It added that restrictions on who was allowed to prescribe drugs
- only doctors are typically licensed in South Africa to do so -
could cripple the country's efforts to get AIDS medication to some
700,000 people in need of treatment.
South African health officials have responded to the crisis by,
among other things, enlisting traditional healers, or sangomas as
they are called, to spot the signs of HIV infection and persuade
patients to get tested and take ARVs.
Many South Africans consult traditional healers for routine
problems. Educating these practitioners about HIV/AIDS could help
dispel the myths surrounding the disease and stop its spread.
"Traditional healers are so important in these communities.
People trust them more than they trust us nurses," said Ivy
Mdletshe, a nurse who is part of a project linking traditional
healers with standard healthcare in KwaZulu-Natal province.
The program, however, is seen as a stopgap by members of the
medical profession who question whether healers will be able to
diagnose HIV, which is sometimes accompanied and mistaken as
pneumonia or tuberculosis, both rampant in South Africa.
(China Daily via agencies June 5, 2007)
