South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang dismissed calls by scientists, activists and labor unionists for her to quit because she hasn't combated AIDS effectively. She said the criticism is unfounded.

Tshabalala-Msimang “re-affirms her commitment to lead the department of health's efforts to rigorously implement all the elements” of the government's AIDS program, the health ministry said today in an e-mailed statement. “The plan makes available a number of interventions to maintain optimal health of people living with HIV and AIDS.”

Tshabalala-Msimang has urged AIDS patients to eat more beetroot and garlic to strengthen their immune systems, and is now dubbed “Dr. Beetroot” in the local media. She has also backed the use of traditional medicines to help fight the disease.

An estimated 5,5-million South Africans, or one in nine, are infected with HIV, according to government figures. On September 4, 82 scientists, including Robert C. Gallo, who helped discover the AIDS virus, and David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist, wrote to President Thabo Mbeki asking him to fire Tshabalala-Msimang, saying she is undermining the country's fight against AIDS.

Tshabalala-Msimang has “expressed pseudo-scientific views about the management of HIV infection,” they wrote. “To have as health minister a person who now has no international respect is an embarrassment to the South African government.”

The Congress of South African Trade Unions, the country's biggest labor federation with about 1,8-million members, today said it shared the scientists' concerns.

While the government adopted a comprehensive program to combat AIDS in 2003, “there is still a huge gap between the plan on paper and its implementation on the ground,” the labor group said in an emailed statement.

The federation, which forms part of a ruling alliance with the African National Congress, stopped short of calling for Tshabalala-Msimang's removal. The Treatment Action Campaign, the country's main AIDS activists group, has called on her to leave.

The government yesterday said it would address perceptions that it wasn't doing enough to combat AIDS and provide treatment and announced that a new Cabinet committee would be set up to oversee its efforts. Several newspapers today ran front-page stories, saying the measure effectively side-lined the health minister.

The health ministry said it “welcomes the intervention by Cabinet to address the challenge of a campaign to deliberately misrepresent the government's AIDS plan.”