Garlic AIDS cure minister sidelined

THABO Mbeki, the South African president, has moved to sideline his controversial health minister who advocates eating garlic and beetroot to cure AIDS.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, known to her many critics as Dr No, last week came under attack from a group of the world's leading AIDS experts, who called her an embarrassment and urged Mr Mbeki to sack her.

Until recently, South Africa had more HIV-positive people than any other country - nearly six million in a population of 42 million. More than 40,000 people die each month from AIDS-related infections and each year an extra 800,000 become HIV-positive. India, with a total population of a billion, now has a higher HIV-positive total.

Dr Tshabalala-Msimang has enjoyed the full support of Mr Mbeki, himself notorious for his denial of the scientifically established link between the HIV virus and AIDS. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South Africa's Nobel Peace Prize winner, said: "

We are playing with the lives of people, with the lives of mothers who would not have died if they had had drugs. Let's not play games. Stop all this discussion about garlic."

The 81 leading scientists, including Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the HIV virus, said in a letter to Mr Mbeki: "To deny that HIV causes AIDS is farcical. To promote ineffective, immoral policies on HIV/AIDS endangers lives; to have as health minister a person who now has no international respect is an embarrassment to the South African government.

"We call for the immediate removal of Dr Tshabalala-Msimang as minister of health, and for an end to the disastrous, pseudo-scientific policies that have characterised the South African government's response to HIV/AIDS."

In a classic fudge, which promises to create more problems than it solves, Mr Mbeki has agreed to sideline Dr Tshabalala-Msimang from the fight against AIDS, though she retains her portfolio as health minister.

She will not chair a new committee involving five ministries to oversee a campaign against HIV/AIDS. But the committee will have to work through South Africa's rapidly deteriorating health system under her disastrous policies.

The sacking demand followed an attack on the South African government by Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa.

"South Africa is the only country in Africa whose government is still obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out [anti-retroviral] treatment [for AIDS]," he said last month.

The real test of the new arrangement will be whether it can extend the roll-out of anti-retroviral drugs to the six million people with AIDS. Only a paltry 140,000 currently have access to the drugs.