The scandal of the over 330 000 lives that could have been saved if the proper policies had been followed by then President Thabo Mbeki between 2000 and 2005 is on the front page of the New York Times today.
From the article:
“The Harvard study concluded that the policies grew out of President Thabo Mbeki’s denial of the well-established scientific consensus about the viral cause of AIDS and the essential role of antiretroviral drugs in treating it.
“Coming in the wake of Mr. Mbeki’s ouster in September after a power struggle in his party, the African National Congress, the report has reignited questions about why Mr. Mbeki, a man of great acumen, was so influenced by AIDS denialists.
“And it has again caused soul-searching about why his colleagues in the party did not act earlier to challenge his resistance to broadly accepted methods of treating and preventing AIDS.
“Reckoning with a legacy of such policies, Mr. Mbeki’s’s successor, Kgalema Motlanthe, acted on the first day of his presidency two months ago to remove the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, a polarizing figure who had proposed garlic, lemon juice and beetroot as AIDS remedies. ”

See also:
The full New York Times story
Mbeki ‘has the blood of 330 000 on his hands’
What Obama said about Mbeki and Aids
Harvard School of Public Medicine paper on Aids deaths in South Africa

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3. ANC apology on Aids would help heal the nation
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