President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa insisted on maintaining his view about AIDS yesterday, telling parliament that the Human Immuno deficiency Virus (HIV) could not cause a syndrome and so could not on its own cause AIDS.
Noting that AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, he said: "A virus cannot cause a syndrome. A virus can cause a disease, and AIDS is not a disease, it is a syndrome."
Mr Mbeki said questions about HIV and AIDS had been raised by "very eminent scientists" and declared that while he had no problem accepting that HIV contributed to the collapse of the immune system, other factors were also involved.
Mr Mbeki has maintained that factors such as poverty, poor nutrition and repetitive diseases such as malaria contribute to the spread of AIDS. He said many people did not want to study the issue, and were content to repeat "conventional wisdom".
Mr Mbeki added, though, that the government's programme to deal with the epidemic was "based on the thesis that HIV causes AIDS". When somebody was tested for HIV, he said, the question should be: "What does that measure?"
An advisory panel of scientists which Mr Mbeki set up last May was testing that question and would report by the end of the year, he said.
Mr Mbeki has come in for strong criticism from the medical and scientific community worldwide for his unorthodox views and lack of government action to stem AIDS in a country where 4.2 million people - 10 per cent of the population - were HIV positive at the end of 1999. The government refuses to supply the anti-retroviral drugs AZT or Nevirapine to pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission, even though 5,000 HIV-positive babies are born every month.
Earlier yesterday, the Anglican Church in South Africa said history would rank lack of action on the issue by the government as a crime against humanity on the same scale as apartheid.
The Anglican Primate, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, called on all religious leaders to develop a plan of action to fight the pandemic. "We need an urgent strategic planning meeting of all interested parties so as to develop a plan of action and we need to move fast," he said.
The Arts and Culture Minister, Mr Ben Ngubane, a member of the minority Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), broke ranks with Mr Mbeki, saying he believed that HIV and AIDS were "inseparable."
The 1.7 million Congress of South African Trade Unions declared that the link between HIV and AIDS was "irrefutable" - a stand mirrored by the South African Communist Party, which forms the ruling alliance with the union federation and Mr Mbeki's ANC.