 People sit in the waiting room in an anti-retroviral clinic in Emmaus hospital in Winterton, in South Africa's Kwazulu-Natal region in March 2008. South Africa's new health minister called Monday for renewed global efforts to find an AIDS vaccine, signalling a sharp change from her controversial predecessor in a country with the world's most HIV infections. |
Health Minister Barbara Hogan's pronouncement marked the official end to 10 years of denial about the link between HIV and AIDS by former President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister MantoTshabalala-Msimang, the South African Press Association reported.
Activists also accused Tshabalala-Msimang of spreading confusion about AIDS by saying she did not trust antiretroviral medicines and preferred nutritional remedies such as garlic, beetroot, lemon, olive oil and the African potato.
"We know that HIV causes AIDS," Hogan told delegates.
Monday's speech was her highest-profile public appearance since she became health minister two weeks ago after Mbeki was turned out of office by his party.
"I want to emphasize that we will scale up mother-to-child prevention programs," she said, referring to treatments using anti-retroviral medicine to keep HIV-positive pregnant woman from passing on the disease.
Hogan said government policies over the past 10 years had failed and said South Africa needed to do much more to improve access to anti-AIDS medicines.
She vowed to step up the battle against AIDS, which now accounts for half of all public hospital admissions.
