{"id":114,"date":"2006-08-21T12:15:03","date_gmt":"2006-08-21T17:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/2006\/08\/21\/obama-slams-south-african-aids-re"},"modified":"2006-08-21T12:15:03","modified_gmt":"2006-08-21T17:15:03","slug":"obama-slams-south-african-aids-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/2006\/08\/21\/obama-slams-south-african-aids-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama slams South African AIDS response"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

As reported by Reuters<\/a> today: <\/span><\/p>\n

By Gordon Bell<\/p>\n

CAPE
\nTOWN (Reuters) – Barack Obama, the only black U.S. senator, criticized
\nSouth African leaders on Monday for their slow response to AIDS, saying
\nthey were wrong to contrast “African science and Western science.”<\/p>\n

AIDS
\nactivists say Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is creating
\ndeadly confusion by pushing traditional medicines and a recipe of
\ngarlic, beetroot, lemon and African potatoes to combat AIDS while
\nunderplaying the role of ARVs.<\/p>\n

“The minister of health here has
\ntended to equate traditional medicines to anti-retrovirals (ARV), so on
\nthe treatment side the information being provided by the minister of
\nhealth is not accurate,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It is not an issue of Western
\nscience versus African science, it is just science and it’s not right,”
\nObama told reporters outside an AIDS clinic in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha
\ntownship.<\/p>\n

Tshabalala-Msimang has frequently questioned the
\nefficacy and safety of ARVs and says her approach is aimed at promoting
\nbasic nutrition as a bulwark against becoming ill.<\/p>\n

South Africa
\nhas one of the world’s highest HIV\/AIDS caseloads with one out of nine
\npeople — or five million South Africans — infected.<\/p>\n

The
\ngovernment relented to pressure in 2003 and launched a public ARV
\nprogram which officials describe as one of the largest in the world.
\nBut activists say drugs still only reach a fraction of those living
\nwith AIDS, which still kills more than 800 South Africans every day.<\/p>\n

Speaking
\nduring the South African leg of an African tour, Obama — an Illinois
\nDemocrat whose father was Kenyan — said the battle against AIDS was
\nbeing confounded by denial both within black communities and by the
\ngovernment.<\/p>\n

“I think that is something that is going to have to
\nbe addressed, you have got enormous infection rates (but) there is not
\nenough public education,” he said.<\/p>\n

There had to be a fundamental
\nchange in behavior and that change would not happen until the
\nleadership stood up and spoke about the importance of safe sex
\npractices.<\/p>\n

Men, in particular, needed to be better educated about
\nthe risk they posed to women through unprotected sex, Obama said,
\nadding he hoped to pass this message onto Mbeki and other government
\nministers.<\/p>\n

Obama met health workers at the clinic and talked to
\nHIV infected mothers linked to Mothers2Mothers, a U.S.-sponsored
\nsupport program to help stop the transmission of HIV to babies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As reported by Reuters today: By Gordon Bell CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – Barack Obama, the only black U.S. senator, criticized South African leaders on Monday for their slow response to AIDS, saying they were wrong to contrast “African science and Western science.” AIDS activists say Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is creating deadly confusion by pushing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-policy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}