The KwaZulu-Natal health department is actively promoting AIDS denialists and quack AIDS cures with the apparent blessing of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

Last Friday, the KZN health department hosted an information workshop on HIV treatment at the Edward Hotel in Durban where speakers condemned antiretroviral medicine and called for traditional medicine to be promoted instead.

The meeting was opened by KZN Health MEC Peggy Nkonyeni while Tshabalala-Msimang delivered the keynote address. The meeting was then addressed by Dr Cyril Khanyile of Medunsa University, who disputes that HIV causes AIDS, Traditional Healers Organisation President Nhlavana Maseko, who is an outspoken opponent of ARVs and Zeblon Gwala, who makes an expensive concoction called uBhejane which he touts as an AIDS cure.

The only information handed to delegates was booklets produced jointly by the Dr Rath Health Foundation and the SA National Civic Organisation

(Sanco) which claim that all antiretroviral medicine is toxic.

The meeting was for stakeholders in the HIV/AIDS sector, according to provincial health spokesperson Leon Mbangwa, yet the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) was barred from attending.

TACs KZN co-ordinator Phillip Mokoena said that his organisation had heard about the treatment meeting the morning it was taking place and members had gone to the hotel to try to attend.

The people at the door went to ask the MEC if we could attend the meeting but she refused, said Mokoena.

The general secretary of the eThekwini Traditional Healers Council, Bongi Nkomo, said that her organisation had also not been invited to the meeting.

I know nothing about this meeting and we dont know the people who were speaking there or who attended, said Nkomo.

When asked why someone like Gwala had been given a platform by his department, Mbangwa said it was a meeting to share information and that these are the people who treat our people.

Although the meeting claimed to be a workshop on HIV treatment, not a single speaker on the programme addressed the use of ARVs, which is the cornerstone of governments treatment plan.

Carte Blanche presenter Bongani Bingwa, who attended part of the meeting, said that it focused on how the health department could form partnerships with traditional healthcare providers to address HIV.

Maseko said that traditional healers must get an allocation from the national health budget. He suggested they should get something like 25 percent of the budget, said Bingwa, who was waiting to interview the MEC for a programme being broadcast tonight on her spat with rural doctors.

Since being appointed MEC in late 2004, Nkonyeni has become increasingly vocal about her scepticism about antiretroviral drugs, particularly AZT.

In 2006, she and the health minister also reportedly recommended to a hospice that it should give its patients uBhejane. In February, Nkonyeni described AZT as being toxic at a meeting at Manguzi Hospital.

Departmental spokesperson Mbangwa said that while he did not hear her saying this, scientifically yes, there’s toxic (sic) in AZT, no doctor can deny that.

When asked whether it was the official departmental view that AZT was toxic, Mbangwa said: Go to any doctor and he will tell you, yes, it is toxic.

The fact of the matter is, [AZT] not a treatment for HIV and AIDS.

(ARVs) are not an answer at all (to the AIDS epidemic).   An answer is one plus one equals two that’s an answer. It’s very important for the media to tell people the truth. ARVs and AZT are not a treatment to HIV and Aids. They are part of the solution. But not an answer.

When asked whether the MEC subscribed to the view in the Sanco-Rath literature that ARVs were being pushed by drug cartels intent on establishing pharmaceutical colonialism, Mbangwa replied: Im not going to say what the MEC subscribes to. She did not distribute this literature. You can be in a workshop and give a talk, but that doesnt mean that the contents of the literature has been organised by you.

However, in a recent meeting with the TAC, Nkonyeni had prominently displayed one of the Rath-Sanco booklets that was distributed called End AIDS: Break the chains of pharmaceutical colonialism on her desk.

The book compares the TAC to Nazi brown shirts, argues that all ARVs are toxic and claims that Vitamin C can block the multiplication of HIV by more than 99 percent.

When asked why Nkonyeni had displayed the book at the meeting, spokesperson Chris Maxon said that the MEC, like any person in this country, is free to stimulate her brains with anything and any reading material. The book is not banned in the country and we do not understand why she would be prevented from reading it or any other book for that matter.

While Nkonyeni is a close ally of ANC President Jacob Zuma, she is facing serious corruption allegations and will probably be dropped from the ANCs provincial list for the 2009 elections, according to a senior government source who declined to be named.

The source added that the MEC could have tried to use the fact that the health minister attended her meeting to bolster her flagging support.

Mark Heywood, the deputy chairperson of the SA National AIDS Council, said that the ANC should discipline and restrain the MEC and Minister.

The position of the ANC is very clear arising from the Polokwane conference and that is that we must expand access to antiretroviral medicines, said Heywood.

Theyre also in conflict with their own government policies. In

2007 the Cabinet adopted the National Strategic Plan on HIV and AIDS, which says that by 2011, we should try to reduce the number of mother-to-child HIV infections to less than five percent.

We cant do that if we are sending out confusing messages that tell people that the antiretroviral drugs that the government itself includes in its programme are poisonous and dangerous.

Meanwhile, national health spokesperson Fidel Hadebe said that Tshabalala-Msimang had been invited to address the meeting by the MEC and had nothing to do with who was invited or what information was handed out.

At no stage has the Minister endorsed traditional medicine as being a solution to HIV and AIDS, said Hadebe. On a number of occasions, the Minister has reiterated her commitment to the countrys National Strategic Plan.

Hadebe also denied that the Minister and MEC had formed an alliance aimed at promoting traditional medicine as an alternative to ARVs.

KwaZulu-Natal has the highest HIV rate and the lowest life expectancy in the country, with 40% of pregnant women infected with the virus.