Cape Town - Former President Thabo Mbeki’s HIV and Aids stance will certainly fuel the latent stigma and denialism that health professionals, scientists, NGOs and civil society have worked so hard to mitigate.
This is according to the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), supported by the South African Medical Research Council, following Mbeki’s remarks at Unisa last week, which the organisations said would fuel denialism.
Mbeki had said he still did not understand how a virus could cause Aids.
“Aids the acronym is Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. It’s not a disease.
“A syndrome in medical terms is a group of diseases. So all of these diseases that fall within the syndrome, meningitis, TB, are in the syndrome. When people say to me HIV causes Aids, I say one virus causes a syndrome, diseases with known causes?
“You can’t say one virus causes all of these illnesses. What you can say is that this virus impacts negatively on the immune system – it’s that weakened immune system that results in the syndrome ...”
Mbeki’s repeated claims have fuelled anger among the medical fraternity and loved ones of those who lost the battle against HIV, especially during his presidency.
In a statement on Wednesday, ASSAf said it was disappointed that Mbeki chose this moment to resurrect discredited propositions on HIV and Aids.
“His administration’s ambiguity on the role of HIV causing Aids resulted in a decline in life expectancy from 62 years in 1994 to 52.5 years by 2005.
“His comments at Unisa will certainly fuel the latent stigma and denialism that health professionals, scientists, NGOs and civil society have worked so hard to mitigate and place more than five and half million of the approximately eight million patients living with HIV on long-term, life-saving antiretroviral therapy.
“To have made these comments at an institution of higher learning, where President Mbeki is invested as chancellor, makes a dispiriting commentary even more egregious.
The tortured explanation he offered, replete with a poor grasp of the scientific nomenclature, is no different to his posture when he denied the existence of HIV and that it caused Aids.”
That Mbeki chose to make these remarks after years of remaining silent was “simply shocking”, ASSAf said.
“His comments also come in an era of social media, through which young people may view him as an ‘influencer’ and potentially propagate his views, with serious aggravating consequences.
“We strongly urge him to desist from further expounding publicly on this matter in a way that reverses the gains the country has made in managing this most heavy burden of HIV/Aids and from abusing academic platforms to peddle unscientific fringe theories that can only serve to confuse those who are, or may be at risk of, those living with HIV and Aids,” ASSAf said.
Health Department spokesperson Foster Mohale said: “DoH comment is that HIV attacks the immune system, which leads to a person infected manifesting with different types of diseases due to a compromised immune system (eg diarrhoea, oral sores, chest infections, skin infections, anaemia, loss of weight, etc).”
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) also slammed Mbeki for being unrepentant about his HIV/Aids denialism.
Talking to Cape Times sister publication The Star, TAC national chairperson Sibongile Tshabalala said she was incensed by Mbeki’s comments.
She said she held a personal grudge against the former president as someone who had been living with HIV for the last 22 years.
“I am very disappointed as a person living with HIV, and I am disappointed as someone who has suffered.
With all the challenges we have been through, the former president still thinks that way.”
Cape Times