THE fight against HIV in South Africa has taken another knock. On 9 August President Thabo Mbeki fired the deputy health minister for "insubordination" after she attended an AIDS conference in Spain without asking permission first.
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge was co-architect of a five-year plan to triple the number of South Africans on free HIV drugs by 2011 - but the future of that plan is now in doubt. She had previously criticised Mbeki for denying that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and claiming HIV drugs are toxic.
Treatment Action Campaign, an AIDS activist group in Muizenberg, South Africa, describes Mbeki's decision as a "dreadful error of judgement". "It indicates that he still remains opposed to the science of HIV and to appropriately responding to the epidemic," the group says.
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