Only 2% of SA Citizens have been Tested for HIV. 28/03/08

The billions spent on failed biological tools to stop HIV infection, such as microbicides, should rather have been spent on "human behavioural stuff", according to the president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, Francois Venter.

"We have to fix human behaviour. The solution to the HIV crisis is probably in our social values," Venter said in a hard-hitting talk in Cape Town on Wednesday night.

It was estimated that half of all South Africans will eventually be infected with HIV and this showed how the prevention policy had failed.

The failure was due to healthcare workers not offering patients what they needed, but preaching "a moral message" of stopping smoking, better nutrition and "believing in Jesus".

Consequently, three-quarters of those who tested positive were lost to follow-up, until their white blood cell counts dropped to a critical point and they returned desperately ill. "When are we going to start offering something that patients value?"

Since anti-retroviral therapy (Art) rollout, there had been 1.8 million new infections. There were four new infections for every one person starting on Art.

"What is going on that we will be treating in 10 years someone who is infected tonight? We need an emergency approach to prevention. There is not a single hint at the moment that the HIV rate is going down, except maybe in teenagers," he said.

In South Africa, half of all deaths a year were Aids-related. By 2025, the best forecast for life expectancy would be 59 years and the worst 50 years.

The fact that there would be two million Aids orphans by 2010 was an "absolute national catastrophe and crisis by itself" - especially considering there was no social welfare system in place to deal with it.

While promoting the use of condoms was the major thrust of the HIV prevention campaign in South Africa, people were still not registering that they had to use them every time they had sex.

And there was no focus on the high risk groups: married women and widows.

"We do not understand the sexual dynamics of this country," Venter said.

Only two percent of the population have tested for HIV.

"Everybody thinks they're immune," he added. Four-fifths of those with HIV in the world lived in southern Africa and one-fifth in South Africa.

A World Health Organisation report recently warned that the world "must be scared" if South Africa does not get its HIV problem right, he said.

Another future problem was that while medicine took care of tuberculosis, pneumonia and gastroenteritis - the top three killers in South Africa apart from Aids - there would be "a flood" of cardiovascular diseases from the fourth and fifth top killers - the lifestyle diseases, hypertension and diabetes.