No+Aids+death+crisis-+Mbeki,+City+Press

City Press, Johannesburg, 25/02/2006 21:10 - (SA)
=No Aids death crisis- Mbeki=


 * JIMMY SEEPE and MAPULA SIBANDA**

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki is adamant that the public service is not facing a major HIV/Aids crisis. This is despite the fact that government does not know the extent of the ravages of Aids on its public servants. Asked if the government was faced with a national crisis because of the increasing number of public servants dying from the pandemic, Mbeki said no-one had raised the alarm to indicate the effects of Aids on government employees.

Speaking at his official residence, Mahlamba'Ndlopfu, Mbeki said he had not been provided with any information indicating that public servants at different levels of government, like teachers, were dying. "We need to do some research to say what the level of deaths are in the public service as a result of natural and non-natural causes.

"People die from anything . . . no-one has sounded the alarm where I work daily in the Presidency and nobody has said there is a particularly alarming tendency of people dying. There has not been any indication . . . ;In the presidency nobody has said we are losing 10 percent of our staff every year because of Aids."

Mbeki's statement follows a recent report about a serious concern in the education sector about the number of teachers living with Aids who might die annually if they did not receive antiretrovirals (ARVs). The findings come from a study by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) that was commissioned by the Education Labour Relations Council last year. It covered more than 20 000 respondents in 54 districts countrywide. The study said a minimum of 10 000 teachers living with Aids urgently need to be put on ARVs. It called for swift intervention from the education department to save the teachers.

But Mbeki dismissed the report as highly speculative.

"Nothing has been said by anybody like the thing you are indicating (the teachers' report) - that you have got this kind of wastage as a result of Aids. I have not seen any such thing."

Mbeki this week questioned the statement by the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) about the large number of teachers dying from the disease.

He said he had asked Sadtu to provide him with facts to substantiate its claim which it did not do. He said issues critical to government regarding teachers included ensuring the permanent employment of part-time and unemployed teachers.

"There are too many teachers in part-time employment, they need to work full time. The things we should be agitated about are those things (and) not this."

Sadtu president Willie Madisha said the union had not received Mbeki's request to provide him with information regarding its claims.

"We relied on the HSRC which provided us with information after its study indicated that about 12,7 percent of teachers have HIV while 10 000 are in need of immediate ARV treatment," he said. There are approximately 300 000 teachers in South Africa. This means that about 40 000 teachers are infected with HIV.

There is scientific research which was requested and agreed to by all teacher unions in the public service. Education department officials sat in the same forum where all teacher unions came up with this request (for a study on HIV/Aids among teachers)."

Madisha said Sadtu had called on education authorities to institute urgent steps to deal with the large number of vacancies that would be created by teachers dying of Aids.

Mark Heywood, head of the Aids Law Project, said it was "unbecoming for President Mbeki to blame others for not getting any reports". He said Mbeki's inaction to audit the effects of Aids in the civil service was a neglect of duty.

He was privileged to make deductions of the impact of Aids from many sources in government, such as the home affairs department, or the latest survey on mortality rates by Statistics SA.

Mbeki conceded there was a need to research the level of attrition in the public service because of natural and unnatural causes.

Slamming speculative reports that government could not act on, Mbeki compared the latest reports with the Metropolitan report that examined the effect of Aids on business by saying, " . . . in terms of the effect on the economy, they say it is not significant - that's what Metropolitan Life said".

He quoted a mining company, which he did not name, that had pointed to a decline in the rate of HIV infections among employees.

Asked how this had been achieved, he was told it was through the company's aggressive intervention on TB and STDs.


 * From: http://www.news24.com/City_Press/News/0,,186-187_1888555,00.html **

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