Day: July 17, 2003

AIDS Quackery In South Africa

Name a disease and somewhere in the world there are bound to be a group of quacks who think this or that oddball treatment will cure some disease or another. So normally it would not be at all surprising or particularly dismaying that Manto Tshabalala-Msimang believes that people in South Africa can boost their immune systems against AIDS by eating the African sweet potato, hypoxis. Of course what little available evidence there is on hypoxis suggest that, if anything, it is likely to suppress the immune system if eaten in large enough quantities.

Unfortunately, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is not just some nutcase quack (though she definitely is that) — she also happens to be the Health Minister of South Africa. That is right, the country with the most AIDS victims in the world also has as its health minister a quack who claims that rather than anti-retroviral drugs, which South Africans really need to do is just eat more sweet potatoes (and garlic and onions).

In a sign of the times, even in the developing world, the opposition Democratic Alliance has set up a web site devoted solely to Manto’s blunders, Fire Manto that is in a weblog-style format (though with annoying Javascript pop-ups for the content). So you can scroll down and see Manto attributing the AIDS epidemic to God in a way that would make Jerry Falwell proud,

It could be a God-given opportunity for moral and spiritual growth, a time to review our assumption about sin and morality.

Manto is so hostile to anti-retroviral drugs that in 2002 she was angered when a multinational mining company urged its subsidiaries to provide anti-retroviral drugs to workers in countries where the government was unable to do so.

This is a woman who is so far gone that at one point she circulated a memorandum to various South African government officials that featured a chapter from a book claiming that AIDS was part of a conspiracy by extraterrestrials.

Bush’s recent pledge of $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa is a good start, but not if it’s going to end up buying sweet potatoes and helping Manto push this sort of nonsense.

AIDS In Africa

Earlier this month someone in South Africa leaked an unpublished government report on the anti-AIDS drugs. Although the South African government has refused to buy or distribute anti-AIDS drugs due to a host of objections, the leaked report estimated that making anti-AIDS drugs available could save the lives of as many as 1.7 million South Africans over the next seven years.

Although the report was completed in March, the South African government claimed that it was simply a first draft and that it is doing all it can to treat AIDS patients.

In the past, South African government officials have trotted out every excuse from the expense of the drugs to claims that they need to be tested more thoroughly before they could be used in South Africa.

Meanwhile, in a visit to Africa U.S. president George W. Bush promised $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa which put pressure on European nations to contribute billions as well.

Speaking before the International Aids Society conference, Nelson Mandela said that Bush had “moved the debate from hundreds of millions of dollars to tens of billions of dollars.”

Sources:

SA Aids deaths report leaked. The BBC, July 14, 2003.

Can Africa handle AIDS drugs? Patrick Jackson, The BBC, July 15, 2003.

Recipe for Disaster. The Star (South Africa), July 17, 2003.

Mandela assails global injustice of AIDS crisis. Sarah Boseley and Rory Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald, July 15, 2003.