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It i
s as important to tackle gender discrimination as it is to
tackle HIV/Aids, African National Congress (ANC) spokesman Smuts
Ngonyama said on yesterday.
He told an Idasa seminar in Cape Town that the media had a tendency
to separate HIV and Aids from other health issues, such as malaria
and cholera, and from social challenges.
"It is as important to tackle poverty, unemployment,
underdevelopment and, more importantly, gender discrimination," he
said.
Treatment Action Campaign deputy chairperson Sipho Mthathi,
speaking immediately after Ngonyama, said it was "very sad" that he
should say HIV/Aids should be viewed only as part of a broader
series of challenges.
This demonstrated a lack of understanding of the extent to which
HIV/Aids underlines "every other effort we make".
Other issues were important, but it was time to start taking
HIV/Aids seriously.
"It is not just another health issue," she said.
Ngonyama also told the seminar, on media, Aids and governance, that
the complex science of HIV/Aids and its inaccurate statistics made
discussion of the issue difficult.
Most members of the ANC censored themselves for fear of unleashing
a media storm, which led to a narrowing of debate.
Those who did speak up were "bludgeoned quite strongly" and
labelled denialists.
He said it was quite understandable that HIV/Aids should be
aprominent political issue.
However rather than focussing on the choices that needed to be made
in tackling HIV/Aids, much of the media coverage of the disease had
been clouded by party political posturing.
"One of the greatest dangers that we have observed with the
communication on HIV and Aids, particularly through the
mainstream media, is the tendency to reduce a major social problem
to little more than a political football," he said.
Generally, if politicians did not have an edge on political issues,
they believed they could survive by creating "a perception".
This was a dangerous and fatal game.
Ngonyama also said he had been struck by the recent Group of Eight
(G8) endorsement of a call for a global HIV vaccine enterprise,
aimed at coordinating research worldwide.
He said this was a process started by South Africa with the
creation of the presidential Aids advisory panel.
However, then the government were labelled as dissidents. –
Sapa.
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