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Heal
th minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang yesterday unveiled the
South African exhibition stand before the start of the
International Aids Conference in Bangkok, Thailand.
Her ministry said in a statement the exhibition demonstrated the
work that South Africans, both in and outside government, had done
to respond to the challenges posed by HIV and Aids.
In an address, Tshabalala-Msimang emphasised the importance of this
conference to South Africa.
"The area that we will be focusing on during this conference is
prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV.
"As a country, we tried to interrogate the use of nevirapine as a
monotherapy to mothers and babies. However due to pressure from
some civil society organisations, our court ruled that we needed to
extend the provision of this drug beyond the research programme
that we had."
The challenges around infant feeding had also not been
resolved.
"We invested on providing infant formula for this programme,
however the recent findings are supportive of the breast-feeding
option. We hope that this conference will provide sufficient data
to enable us to reflect appropriately on these matters.
"We will soon convene a national consultative meeting to discuss
the outcomes of this conference in relation to our PMTCT
programme," Tshabalala-Msimang said.
She also noted the recent announcement by the Actuarial Association
of South Africa that the number of people with HIV in the country
was about 33% less than what the researchers thought.
"I must say that we have always been concerned about how the
previous figures were calculated. The researchers have come to this
new conclusion because for the first time, they have taken into
account the impact of our interventions including prevention and
treatment," said Tshabalala-Msimang. – Sapa.
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