JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- The South African government is expected to announce a newly-revised AIDS-combating strategy this week with intensified prevention and treatment measures, a long-waited boost to the country's arduous fight against the world's most serious AIDS epidemic.
South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Wednesday that a revised Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS for the 2007-2011 period would be announced on the World AIDS Day, which falls on Friday, at a national commemorative event in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga Province.
The plan "will guide the country's response to HIV/AIDS in a manner that ensures continuity of the current strategies while introducing additional interventions required to keep up with recent advances in knowledge," Tshabalala-Msimang said in a statement.
South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who also chairs the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC), would elaborate the plan, said Tshabalala-Msimang, who, however, said she would not attend the event.
A South African newspaper revealed the plan two weeks ago, whose aims include halving the HIV-infection rate in the next five years while providing treatment to 750,000 patients.
The new plan spells out 30 goals under four priority areas -- preventing new infections; providing treatment, care and support to people infected with HIV; improving HIV research, and implementing a monitoring and evaluation framework for the plan's targets; and ensuring that the rights of people infected with HIV are protected, according to national newspaper Business Day.
More than 5.5 million South Africans, or 12 percent of the population, are infected with HIV. The United Nations said this number is the second largest in the world, only after India.
The plan, if published, comes amid signs of a dramatic rethink in government circles about a comprehensive approach to the pandemic.
It coincides with a new drive led by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka as the head of the SANAC to reverse negative international perceptions of South Africa's AIDS-fighting efforts.
Pretoria has long been under domestic and international pressures, blamed of lacking firm and clear leadership to tackle with the epidemic.
The draft plan is a marked departure from the government's 2000-2005 plan, which has been widely criticized for its failure to include clear targets and a monitoring and evaluation framework.
However, the health minister defended that the government has achieved remarkable progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
"We are keeping our promise as the South African Department of Health to increasing access to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment services," she said on Wednesday.
More than 1.7 million people have used the voluntary counseling and testing services available in 4,172 clinics in the last financial year, she said, adding that more than 380 million condoms are being distributed annually.
Services to reduce the risk of mother to child transmission of HIV are available in all hospitals and 86 percent of clinics,
A total of 213,828 adults and children have been put on the government-paid Antiretroviral treatment (ART) program by end of September 2006, with an average of 11,000 patients joining the ART program every month, the minister said.
But the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society estimated that the number was only about a fifth of the HIV patients in need of life-prolonging antiretroviral medicines.
Health Minister Tshabalala-Msimang becomes highly controversial in recent two years, partly because she adamantly promoted a diet of beetroot, lemons and garlic as an alternative treatment of AIDS, causing confusion over what is effective AIDS treatment.
In past months international and domestic AIDS campaigners have repeatedly demanded Tshabalala-Msimang to resign. President Thabo Mbeki's decision to make his deputy president the head of SANAC was also seen a move to marginalize the embattled health minister.
