Manto Tshabalala-Msimang

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Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (9 October 1940 - ) is the Health Minister of South Africa under the government of Thabo Mbeki (as of 2005). She was a deputy minister of Justice from 1996 to 1999, and then has served as Health Minister since 1999.

Her controversial emphasis on treating AIDS with vegetables such as garlic and beetroot, rather than with antiretroviral medicines, has been the subject of international criticism.

1 Education
2 AIDS policies
3 Personal
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Education

She graduated from Fort Hare University in 1961. As one of a number of young African National Congress cadres sent into exile for education, she received medical training at the First Leningrad Medical Institute in the Soviet Union from 1962-1969. She then trained as a registrar in obstetrics and gynecology in Tanzania, finishing there in 1972. In 1980 she received a master's in public health from the University of Antwerp in Belgium. She was an official within the exiled ANC leadership in Tanzania and Zambia during the latter decade of apartheid, with job responsibilities focused on the health and well-being of ANC militants there.

[edit] AIDS policies

Her office has been controversial, mainly because of her reluctance to adopt a plan for treating AIDS in the public sector with anti-retroviral medicines. She has been called 'Dr Beetroot' for promoting the benefits of beetroot, garlic, lemons, and African potatoes as well as good general nutrition, while referring to possible toxicities of AIDS medicines.^[1] She was widely seen as following an AIDS policy in line with the ideas of South African President Thabo Mbeki, who for a time expressed public doubts about whether HIV caused AIDS. In 2002, the South African Cabinet affirmed the policy that "HIV causes AIDS" which as an official statement silenced any further speculation on this topic by Cabinet members, including the President. In August of 2003 the cabinet also voted to make anti-retrovirals available in the public sector, and instructed Tshabalala-Msimang to carry out the policy.

Particularly in the time leading up to this turnabout, but continuing to the present day, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and its founder Zackie Achmat have often targeted the minister for criticism, accusing the government and the Ministry of Health in particular of an inadequate response to the AIDS epidemic. The TAC has led a grassroots campaign calling for her resignation or dismissal.

Tshabalala-Msimang has placed her emphasis on broad public health goals, seeing AIDS as only one aspect of that effort and one which, because of the financial costs of treatment, might impede broader efforts. She has evidently not embraced the idea, advanced by others, that AIDS is such a burden on the public health system that treating it would actually free up costs. A report making the case for this argument was sent back for clarification and not released in the summer of 2003, until it was obtained and leaked by TAC.^[2] After the cabinet vote to accept the findings of this report, she has been in charge of the ARV roll-out, but has continued to emphasize the importance of nutrition in AIDS^[3] and to urge others to see AIDS as only one problem among many in South African health. A case that attracted much public attention was Nozipho Bhengu, daughter of an African National Congress legislator. The minister declined to attend her funeral, and her stand-in was booed off the podium.

In February 2005, COSATU criticised the health department for the failure to ensure that most of the 30 million rands used to establish the government's AIDS trust in 2002 had been spent.^[4] They said only R520,000 of this money has been used and of this a large portion had been squandered on unoccupied offices for the SANAC secretariat, something that has drawn criticism from the auditor-general.

In August 2006, at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for AIDS in Africa, closed the conference with a sharp critique of South Africa's government. He said South Africa promoted a "lunatic fringe" attitude toward HIV and AIDS, describing the government as "obtuse, dilatory, and negligent about rolling out treatment".^[5]^[6] After the conference, sixty-five of the world's leading HIV/AIDS scientists (most of them were attending the conference) asked in a letter that Thabo Mbeki dismiss Tshabalala-Msimang.^[7]

[edit] Personal

The Minister is married to Mendi Msimang, the treasurer of the African National Congress.

There has been some concern over the minister's health since late 2006. Tshabalala-Msimang was admitted to the Johannesburg Hospital on 20 February 2007 suffering from anaemia and pleural effusion (an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the pleural cavity - a fluid-filled space surrounding the lungs)^[8]. The Department of Health has approached President Thabo Mbeki, asking him to appoint an acting minister, and on 26 February Jeff Radebe was appointed acting health minister^[9].