via NYT:
A new study by Harvard researchers estimates that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.AmericaBlog has some strong words that I concur with:
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.
"I've felt for years that someone should have gone in and forcibly removed this man from office by any means necessary. When the leader of a nation basically denies the existence of AIDS - the idiot still believes this crap - he is committing genocide. Mbeki's health minister proposed using garlic, lemon juice and beetroot as a treatment for AIDS - that moron was removed from office only two months ago when Mbeki was forced out of his job. The world should have come together and removed Mbeki a long ago. He is no better than the apartheid masters he replaced. And anyone who aided and abetted this man in the South African government should be thrown in jail. I'm sorry, but he prematurely murdered 365,000 people. The man is a pig. He ought to be in jail. He ought to be with the 365,000 people he killed."What was the upside in denying the facts? It wasn't money. It was not kickbacks from some pharmaceutical company. You just stood and stared as your people died.
The good news is that Barbara Hogan has been put in charge as health minister by the new president, Kgalema Motlanthe. “I feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying,” Ms. Hogan, an A.N.C. stalwart who was imprisoned for a decade during the anti-apartheid struggle, said in a recent interview. “The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa.”
Source: NYT
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