AIDS: A multifaceted South African crisis (continued)
Part 2 of 8
For a printer-friendly version of this story, click here.

On the eve of South Africa's second democratic elections, dramas like these are being played out all over country and the issue of AIDS prevention has become the center of a political and social war being waged for the nation's future.

In a country of 40 million, it is estimated that one out of every eight people is infected with HIV/AIDS. One million of those victims are children. Every day in Soweto alone, one in three babies is born with the virus that causes AIDS.

If South Africa is to avoid losing most of a generation, something must be done to halt the epidemic.

But neither doctors nor the ANC-led government can agree on how best to beat back this killer and the social mores that are helping it spread.

For the black government to win the war against this viral menace, it must not only attack the disease, but a whole host of socio-political issues. To fight AIDS in South Africa means combating ignorance, poverty and the legacy of apartheid.

In the struggle to educate people about AIDS, Dr. Nono Similela, director of AIDS and STDs for the South African Ministry of Health says, "You need to realize that not everybody is literate out there. So if you put messages on billboards, if you make pamphlets, you still are not reaching the lowest of the low."

"We are charged with looking at everybody -- the ones who are already dying, the hospitals that are overcrowded," Similela adds.

"Look at where we are coming from. Look at the average woman in Kwa-Zulu Natal. They've got no water. They've got no food," Similela says, "Poverty, social deprivation, these are the things we have to address."

Similela says, "People are worried about issues of survival, not their well-being in five years."

<--Back

Next-->