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The fight against Aids in South Africa was dealt a devastating blow yesterday when President Thabo Mbeki sacked the country's deputy health minister, the woman credited with ending a decade of Aids denial.
Doctors and activists fear the decision spells a disastrous political regression which could ultimately cost the lives of hundreds of thousands.
More than 1000 people a day in South Africa die of Aids or Aids-related conditions. Five million people out of a population of 45 million, or one in 10, are HIV positive.
In the worst-hit regions, 40 per cent of pregnant women in their late 20s are infected, and 1400 people are newly infected with HIV every day.
The sacked minister, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge is an outspoken critic of Mbeki and his health minister Manto Tshabalala Msimang.
She was the co-architect of a five-year plan to accelerate the rollout of free life-saving Aids drugs, tripling the numbers on treatment by 2011. Insiders says her crime was to criticise the president's handling of the epidemic.
"It's an absolute disgrace," said Mike Waters, the opposition Democratic Alliance's health spokesman.
"For the first time we had a deputy minister with a clear direction in the fight against Aids. The president and the minister are denialists, while the deputy minister has her feet stuck in reality."
- Independent
