S Africa dismisses harsh AIDS policy criticism

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 20 (Reuters) South Africa dismissed harsh criticism of its AIDS policy by a top UN official ''with contempt'' and said he was no Messiah for Africa's HIV/AIDS crisis.

UN special envoy on AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis closed a global conference on Friday with probably the most blistering attack ever on South Africa's ''lunatic fringe'' approach to AIDS, calling it immoral and ineffective.

Lewis' comments, echoed by other speakers at the Toronto conference, represented a diplomatic broadside against President Thabo Mbeki's government, which faces one of the world's biggest HIV/AIDS caseloads.

About five million people, or one in nine South Africans, are infected.

Health Ministry spokesman Sibani Mngadi issued a statement on Saturday rejecting Lewis' speech ''with contempt''.

''Lewis is not Africa's Messiah,'' Mngadi said yesterday, detailing South African accomplishments on AIDS including the distribution of millions of free condoms and a free drug programme that now reaches more than 175,000 infected people.

''What Africa needs now is not unsubstantiated attack on democratically elected governments, but delivery on the many resolutions made with regard to addressing poverty and underdevelopment which increases the vulnerability of our population to disease,'' Mngadi said.

South Africa has long been at odds with AIDS activists and medical experts over how to deal with an epidemic which kills more than 800 people in the country every day.

RESISTED OFFERING DRUGS Mbeki's government first denied that the HIV virus causes AIDS and then resisted offering HIV drugs to its people, calling them expensive and potentially dangerous.

The government bowed to public outcry in 2003 and launched a public antiretroviral (ARV) drug programme which officials now call one of the biggest in the world.

But Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang still questions ARVs and instead promotes home-grown remedies such as olive oil, beetroot and garlic. She says they boost nutrition and immune response but activists say her prescription leads to thousands of unnecessary deaths every year.

''It is the only country in Africa whose government continues to propound theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state,'' Lewis said on Friday.

Mbeki's ruling ANC signalled it had no plans to revise its strategy, issuing a statement on Friday savaging the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), South Africa's AIDS activist group which led criticism of Tshabalala-Msimang at the Toronto conference.

''While such confrontational posturing may be necessary for the maintenance of the TAC's international profile, it does nothing to strengthen the country's comprehensive response to HIV and AIDS,'' the ANC said.

The criticism at the Canadian conference drew echoes from South African commentators yesterday.

Vukani Mde, a columnist in Business Day Weekender newspaper, said the turmoil in Toronto enraged him.

''Tshabalala-Msimang is no longer wacky or funny in any way,'' Mde wrote. ''Her behaviour is beyond the realm of the idiotic and now borders on the murderous.'' Reuters AD VP0815