Steve Hayes
2009-12-17 06:57:28 UTC
December 17, 2009
Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, South African Who Oversaw Discredited AIDS
Policy, Dies at 69 By BRUCE WEBER
Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who as South Africa's health minister drew
international censure for questioning the causal connection between
H.I.V. and AIDS and for promoting dietary measures rather than drugs to
treat AIDS, a policy that was held responsible for hundreds of thousands
of premature deaths, died Wednesday in Johannesburg. She was 69.
Her doctor said the cause was complications from a liver transplant she
had in 2007, the South African Press Association reported.
Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang (pronounced cha-buh-LA-lum zih-MANG) lived in
exile for nearly three decades as a member of the African National
Congress, the anti-apartheid group that became South Africa's governing
party in 1994, before becoming health minister in 1999, with the
election of Thabo Mbeki as president. She served in that post until he
resigned last year.
Echoing Mr. Mbeki's own widely lambasted views about AIDS, Dr.
Tshabalala-Msimang advocated marshaling vitamin and nutritional forces
against the AIDS virus, H.I.V. She maintained that foods like garlic,
lemon, African potatoes and beetroot were stauncher defenses than the
antiretroviral drugs that had been proved to prolong the lives of
H.I.V.-positive patients and to help prevent the passage of the virus
from pregnant women to their babies.
Noting that the drugs had side effects, and adopting the claims of
so-called AIDS dissidents who deny a connection between H.I.V. and AIDS,
she referred to the antiretroviral drugs as poison.
"She was one of the disasters of the post-apartheid era," said Mark
Gevisser, the author of "A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the
Future of the South African Dream." She was not up to the job of health
minister, he added. Mr. Mbeki kept her in the job amid intense pressure
to dismiss her "because she very, very quickly became his agent in the
AIDS wars, and she could continue to ask questions he thought had to be
asked but that he couldn't afford, politically, to ask himself," Mr.
Gevisser said.
While Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was health minister, the estimated number
of H.I.V.-infected people in South Africa climbed to more than five
million, more than in any other nation. Critics from around the world
denounced a South African policy that at first opposed and then delayed
the distribution of antiretroviral drugs.
Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was derisively called Dr. Beetroot, and as time
went on the criticism aimed at her and at the Mbeki AIDS policy grew
more and more hostile. Speaking at an international AIDS conference in
Toronto in 2006, Stephen Lewis, the United Nations envoy on AIDS, called
the South African government's drug policy "obtuse, dilatory and
negligent" and said the government "continues to propound theories more
worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state."
The damage was quantified when a study by Harvard researchers released a
year ago stated that the South African AIDS policy was responsible for
the premature deaths of 365,000 people.
Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was born in Durban on Oct. 9, 1940, and educated
at the University of Fort Hare, a haven for black intellectuals (Nelson
Mandela and Desmond Tutu both spent time there) before the African
National Congress was banned from the country. In exile, she lived in
the Soviet Union, where she received a medical degree, and later in
Tanzania, where she studied obstetrics and gynecology.
Returning to South Africa in 1990, she at first worked in community
health organizations. She was elected to Parliament in 1994 and was
chairwoman of the National Assembly's health committee. Before being
appointed to the Health Ministry, she was deputy minister of justice.
Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was married twice. Her survivors include her
husband, Mendi Msimang, former treasurer of the African National
Congress, and two daughters.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, South African Who Oversaw Discredited AIDS
Policy, Dies at 69 By BRUCE WEBER
Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who as South Africa's health minister drew
international censure for questioning the causal connection between
H.I.V. and AIDS and for promoting dietary measures rather than drugs to
treat AIDS, a policy that was held responsible for hundreds of thousands
of premature deaths, died Wednesday in Johannesburg. She was 69.
Her doctor said the cause was complications from a liver transplant she
had in 2007, the South African Press Association reported.
Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang (pronounced cha-buh-LA-lum zih-MANG) lived in
exile for nearly three decades as a member of the African National
Congress, the anti-apartheid group that became South Africa's governing
party in 1994, before becoming health minister in 1999, with the
election of Thabo Mbeki as president. She served in that post until he
resigned last year.
Echoing Mr. Mbeki's own widely lambasted views about AIDS, Dr.
Tshabalala-Msimang advocated marshaling vitamin and nutritional forces
against the AIDS virus, H.I.V. She maintained that foods like garlic,
lemon, African potatoes and beetroot were stauncher defenses than the
antiretroviral drugs that had been proved to prolong the lives of
H.I.V.-positive patients and to help prevent the passage of the virus
from pregnant women to their babies.
Noting that the drugs had side effects, and adopting the claims of
so-called AIDS dissidents who deny a connection between H.I.V. and AIDS,
she referred to the antiretroviral drugs as poison.
"She was one of the disasters of the post-apartheid era," said Mark
Gevisser, the author of "A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the
Future of the South African Dream." She was not up to the job of health
minister, he added. Mr. Mbeki kept her in the job amid intense pressure
to dismiss her "because she very, very quickly became his agent in the
AIDS wars, and she could continue to ask questions he thought had to be
asked but that he couldn't afford, politically, to ask himself," Mr.
Gevisser said.
While Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was health minister, the estimated number
of H.I.V.-infected people in South Africa climbed to more than five
million, more than in any other nation. Critics from around the world
denounced a South African policy that at first opposed and then delayed
the distribution of antiretroviral drugs.
Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was derisively called Dr. Beetroot, and as time
went on the criticism aimed at her and at the Mbeki AIDS policy grew
more and more hostile. Speaking at an international AIDS conference in
Toronto in 2006, Stephen Lewis, the United Nations envoy on AIDS, called
the South African government's drug policy "obtuse, dilatory and
negligent" and said the government "continues to propound theories more
worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state."
The damage was quantified when a study by Harvard researchers released a
year ago stated that the South African AIDS policy was responsible for
the premature deaths of 365,000 people.
Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was born in Durban on Oct. 9, 1940, and educated
at the University of Fort Hare, a haven for black intellectuals (Nelson
Mandela and Desmond Tutu both spent time there) before the African
National Congress was banned from the country. In exile, she lived in
the Soviet Union, where she received a medical degree, and later in
Tanzania, where she studied obstetrics and gynecology.
Returning to South Africa in 1990, she at first worked in community
health organizations. She was elected to Parliament in 1994 and was
chairwoman of the National Assembly's health committee. Before being
appointed to the Health Ministry, she was deputy minister of justice.
Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was married twice. Her survivors include her
husband, Mendi Msimang, former treasurer of the African National
Congress, and two daughters.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk