365,000 Aids victims 'died needlessly'

The South African government could have prevented the premature deaths of at least 365,000 people over a decade if it had pursued appropriate Aids policies, a new study has shown.

The study by Harvard University, published in The New York Times yesterday, said all these lives could have been saved if the government had provided anti-retroviral drugs to Aids patients and widely administered drugs to prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.

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But it took court action by human rights groups for former South African president Thabo Mbeki's government to agree to administer the nevirapine drug that prevents mother-to-child transmission. Mr Mbeki, and his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, did not believe in the efficacy of the drugs.

Mr Mbeki became internationally notorious in 2000 when he questioned the very existence of Aids and suggested that the disease was not caused by HIV but by poverty.

The failure by Mr Mbeki to effectively tackle Aids has tarnished his legacy, and the Harvard study concluded that the mistaken policies that cost so many lives grew out of Mr Mbeki's denialist views. In contrast neighbouring Botswana and Namibia dealt far better with epidemics of a similar scale.

Aids kills an estimated 2,000 people daily in South Africa and the country has the highest prevalence rates in the world. Realising the damage Mr Mbeki's policies had done, his successor, Kgalema Motlanthe, fired Mrs Tshabalala-Msimang on the first day of his presidency and replaced her with Barbara Hogan.

Mrs Tshabalala-Msimang infamously claimed that garlic and beetroot were more effective remedies for Aids than conventional drugs.

"I feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying," Ms Hogan said. "The era of denialism is over in South Africa."