South Africa intensifies war on AIDS

updated 8:30 a.m. ET May 25, 2008

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - The abused and orphaned children in Pastor Julius Bonani's church are the face of an AIDS epidemic that is killing nearly 1,000 South Africans a day and infecting even more.

And yet, the 18 children who live in Bonani's heartbreak home, in a shanty town filled with dust and despair, also personify a tortuous journey toward hope in the country most affected by the AIDS crisis. After a decade of denial under a president who has disputed the cause of AIDS and a health minister who thinks garlic is a remedy, there is growing political will to tackle the crisis.

The challenges are overwhelming. An estimated 5.4 million of South Africa's 48 million people have the virus — the highest total of any country. But after years of pressure from activists, South Africa now boasts the world's biggest AIDS treatment program.

The number of people receiving therapy has more than tripled in just two years, from 143,000 in March 2006 to 456,000 at the end of February, according to government statistics. That's still only half the estimated 900,000 who have developed full-blown AIDS and need treatment, but a national plan launched a year ago aims to provide care and treatment to 80 percent by 2011 and halving the number of new infections.

Abandoned after birth
Some 40,000 children nationwide are receiving AIDS drugs, including the 18 in Bonani's church — children such as Thandiswa, who was found sucking at the breast of her dying mother, her dead twin at her side. And Abina, who still bears the scars of cigarettes her drunken father extinguished on her skin in fury that she had HIV. And Siphosethu, who was abandoned just after birth, smothered in rags, crawling with ants and reeking of festering sores.

They are being transformed into bubbly, bossy 6-year-old Thandiswa; giggling, wriggling Abina; and Siphosethu, whose name means "our gift." They are given their medicine every day with a helping of porridge and a big dollop of love.

"Not one child in our care has died," says Bonani, with a smile. "We are so very, very proud of them."

Bonani and his wife, Lulama, who have looked after their 13-year-old HIV-positive grandson since their own daughter died of AIDS, hope the children in their care will be the last generation infected with HIV through their mother's womb or breast milk.

Mortality rates rise
More than 90 percent of pregnant women with HIV in the Western Cape province around Cape Town now receive drugs to prevent the virus from passing to their unborn children. But in poorer areas like the rural Eastern Cape, the number of women on medication is nearer half.

Health professionals and activists say the biggest test of the government's commitment will be what it does to reduce mother-to-child transmission.

Mortality rates for women and young children are higher now than they were in 1990, before the end of apartheid, according to a study by the Medical Research Council, which said South Africa was one of only 12 countries suffering such increases.

The report, titled "Every Death Counts," said at least 260 mothers, newborns and children under 5 die every day in South Africa, with HIV, AIDS and related infections like tuberculosis and pneumonia responsible for about two-thirds of the deaths.

Straitjacket
After four years of delay, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in February issued guidelines that comply with World Health Organization recommendations: Doctors should give two drugs, nevirapine and AZT, to pregnant women, not just nevirapine, because the dual therapy is much more effective than the single drug. It is now up to individual provinces to implement the new strategy.

The Western Cape didn't wait for the official go-ahead. It broke free of the national health ministry's straitjacket in 2004 and prescribed both drugs, slashing mother-to-child transmission to less than 5 percent — compared with more than 20 percent in some other provinces.

Gauteng, home of Johannesburg and the most populous province, and KwaZulu-Natal, the worst affected, started using both drugs at the start of April. KwaZulu-Natal authorities say they hoped to cut the rate of mother-to-child transmission from the current 32 percent to about 10 percent.

Francois Venter, a doctor who heads the Southern African Clinicians Society, said the dual therapy guidelines had "rejuvenated" prevention efforts. "There's quite a vibe about clinics trying to do better than each other," he said. "People are getting excited about trying to fix the problem."

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