More organisations have joined the call for former president Thabo Mbeki to apologise for his comments on HIV/Aids while addressing students at Unisa.
Organisations – including the SA Medical Research Council, Progressive Health Forum, SA Committee of Medical Deans, SA Medical Association, HIV Clinicians Society, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Section 27 – are demanding that he withdraw his comments.
The organisations have labelled Mbeki’s comments at an event at Unisa as misleading.
In a statement issued by the Academy of Science of South Africa on Wednesday, the organisations said since the Covid-19 pandemic started, there had “been a public acknowledgement at the highest levels of the government of the scientific basis for understanding and managing the pandemic”.
“This played a huge role in preventing the intense efforts of anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and denialists from damaging the response.”
They added it was then disappointing to see Mbeki making unfounded statements on HIV/Aids.
The statement said:
How disappointing, then, that former president 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.
While addressing students at Unisa – where he is chancellor – Mbeki said:
“Now, this syndrome in medical terms is a group of diseases. So, all these diseases which fall under this syndrome, meningitis, TB, they’re in the syndrome.
“Causes of tuberculosis are known and historical, but it’s part of the syndrome. So, you can’t say one virus causes all these illnesses, what you can say is this virus impacts negatively on the immune system, it’s that weakened immune system which results in a syndrome.
“But there’s a consequence to that kind of thinking which is when you go to test, and that test says HIV-positive … it does not necessarily mean you’ve got the virus.
“What it means is that the immune system is responding to something that is threatening the body, and therefore you need a clinical analysis in order to determine what is this thing that the immune system is rejecting.
“It’s in all the medical documents that go about it, and it’s correct because then you have to go and do this clinical examination in order to determine which of these illnesses in the syndrome is the one that’s affecting this person. And then you treat the person for that particular disease.”
TAC chairperson Sibongile Tshabalala said:
The repetition of his scientifically erroneous views with such insensitive arrogance is an insult to the eight million people living with HIV in South Africa and the families of four million South Africans who have died from HIV over the last three decades.
“Every time Mbeki makes these statements, it brings back the tremendous hurt I felt when my husband died from HIV in 2005. I believe that he would be alive today if the government had rolled out treatment earlier.”
News24 asked Unisa and the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute for comment on whether they stand by Mbeki’s utterances or whether he would apologise.
Their comments will be added once received.
News24
