Tag: South Africa

Somebody Tell Belfanonte It’s 2002

There are a lot of bizzare/outrageous statments from Harry Belafonte in this Drudge Report — not the least of which is Belafonte’s racist (and somewhat historically inaccurate) attack on Colin Powell. But scrolling all the way to the bottom of the story shows where Belafonte’s mind is at,

There were tens of thousands of peoples and leaders from all over the world gathered to discuss the issue of race. It was an honorable arena… But by not showing up, by sticking it to the government of Nelson Mandela… It was a dark page on our foreign policy.

Somebody should tell Belafonte that South Africa held elections in 1999 and Mandela stepped down from office in June of that year.

I guess Belafonte doesn’t get out much these days.

South Africa Just Won’t Give Up When It Comes to Promoting AIDS

Given that South Africa has such a high incidence of AIDS infection, a reasonable person might conclude that the country would try to do everything in its power to reduce the risk of infection. Instead, the government continues to do all it can to prevent pregnant women from having access to a drug that can reduce by up to half the risk of passing on AIDS to their newborn infants.

The drug is nevirapine, and studies show that a single dose taken by women during labor can reduce by up to 50 percent the risk of women passing on AIDS to their newborns. The drug is used throughout the world for this purpose, but South Africa has decided that the drug may be too toxic.

A court earlier this summer ordered South Africa’s government to begin providing nevirapine to pregnant women, but now South Africa’s drug approval agency has said it wants to revisit the issue of whether or not the drug is toxic. The agency cites an FDA study in Uganda, but the FDA concern in that study was over whether or not the researchers carrying out the study had sufficiently documented their findings.

The New York Times noted that, “the council’s deliberations revived serious questions about South Africa’s handling of the AIDS epidemic.” To put it more bluntly, is South Africa seriously interested in stopping its AIDS epidemic? Instead of doing so, it seems focused on making the AIDS crisis the focus of some sort of bizarre internal political exercise. South African president Thabo Mbeki seems intent on allowing infants to contract AIDS simply so that he can assert his country’s independence from the medical consensus on HIV.

Source:

South Africa may bar AIDS drug in childbirth. Rachel L. Swarns, The New York Times, August 5, 2002.

What Is Wrong With Thabo Mbeki?

Unbelievably as the 14th International AIDS Conference is getting under way, South Africa’s government is still fighting for the right keep AIDS drugs out of the hands of pregnant women.

And Thabo Mbeki had the balls to show up in Canada last month begging the West for more development aid saying,

The common thread here is the renewed determination among political leaders and civil society to build a humane world of shared prosperity.

Yeah, unless you happen to be an HIV positive pregnant woman.

In fact, in Mbeki’s vision of South Africa, many AIDS deaths don’t happen. Mbeki worked hard, for example, to suppress a report that found AIDS was the leading cause of death in South Africa.

Politician, heal thyself.

Sources:

South Africa ‘must provide Aids drug’. The BBC, July 5, 2002.

Mbeki calls for Africa aid. The BBC, June 24, 2002.

Ministry attacks Mbeki Aids stance. Barnaby Phillips, The BBC, September 21, 2001.

What Is Wrong with Thabo Mbeki?

Unbelievably as the 14th International AIDS Conference is getting under way, South Africa’s government is still fighting for the right keep AIDS drugs out of the hands of pregnant women.

And Thabo Mbeki had the balls to show up in Canada last month begging the West for more development aid saying,

The common thread here is the renewed determination among political leaders and civil society to build a humane world of shared prosperity.

Yeah, unless you happen to be an HIV positive pregnant woman.

In fact, in Mbeki’s vision of South Africa, many AIDS deaths don’t happen. Mbeki worked hard, for example, to suppress a report that found AIDS was the leading cause of death in South Africa.

Politician, heal thyself.

South African Education Minister Calls for Women Only Train Cars

South African Education Minister Kader Asmal this week suggested that female-only train cars need to be created in order to reduce the level of violence directed at women on South Africa’s public transportation system.

Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has experienced a massive crime wave that has seen it lead the world in most violent crime statistics. The high crime rate has in turn led to vigilantism and other problems.

The BBC cites figures claiming that a woman in South Africa today is more likely to be raped than she is to learn to read. Officially, there were almost 25,000 rapes reported to police last year in South Africa, or one for approximately every 850 females.

To put these numbers in perspective, in the United States there are about 72 reported rapes per 100,000 females. In South Africa, that rate is almost 120 reported rapes per 100,000 females.

Several private rail companies in South Africa have already started running female-only train cars, and Asmal suggested that more are needed to protect women.

Source:

Female only trains for SA. The BBC, July 2, 2002.

Measles Vaccination Works in the Developing World

A study published this month in The Lancet should settle once and for all whether or not vaccination of disease is a worthwhile goal to achieve in the developing world. There has been some skepticism over whether or not poor nations possessed the infrastructure to carry out large scale vaccination programs.

The study looked at World Health Organization efforts to vaccinate for measles in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South AFrica, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

Over four years, WHO and national health agencies vaccinated almost 24 million children in those seven countries. The study found that as a result of the vaccination programs, total cases of measles in those countries fell from 60,000 in 1996 to less than 200 in the year 2000. Total deaths dropped from 160 in 1996 to zero in 2000.

Vaccination can work even in extremely poor countries.

Source:

Measles vaccine’s African success story. Corrine Podger, The BBC, May 3, 2002.