SOUTH AFRICA: President Jacob Zuma says he is HIV negative

Record ID: 402342

  • Title: SOUTH AFRICA: President Jacob Zuma says he is HIV negative
  • Date: 26th April 2010
  • Summary: DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA (FILE - 2008) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) BILLBOARD WITH POSTER READING IN ENGLISH: "HIV/AIDS awareness message... Break the Silence!" VARIOUS INTERIORS OF PHARMACY, ANTI-RETROVIRAL MEDICATION, PHARMACIST DISPENSING MEDICATION
  • Embargoed: 11th May 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: South Africa
  • Country: South Africa
  • Topics: Health,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAD3URV8EXZYVOLZD1K4NPQDB84
  • Story Text: South Africa's President Jacob Zuma launched an ambitious HIV testing programme on Sunday (April 15), and shared his own test results amid criticism that his steamy sex life undermines safe sex campaigns.
    The HIV Counselling and Testing Campaign, launched by the president in Katlehong, east of Johannesburg, aims to test 15 million South Africans for HIV by June 2011 and provide treatment to those who test positive for the disease.
    Activists have accused the South African government of dragging its feet in dealing with the disease which kills an estimated 1,000 people there every day. According to the National South African AIDS Council at least 5.7 million of South Africa's 50 million population are infected. Zuma said the campaign encourages people to get tested.
    "The HIV counselling and testing campaign is part of a broader prevention programme, which includes among others: information, education and social mobilisation, detection and management of sexually transmitted infections, the widespread provision of male and female condoms, the introduction of a national medical male circumcision programme, safe blood transmission, preventative treatment for rape survivors at all health facilities, the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission programme," Zuma said.
    Unlike his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki who was labelled an AIDS denialist, Zuma has called for the destigmitazation of HIV.
    "The stigma arises from fear, and fear from ignorance. Let us fight ignorance. The greatest benefit from the HIV testing campaign should be the education of our people and the promotion of the rights to human dignity and privacy of those living with HIV."
    Zuma, who has three wives, has generated controversy around his sex life which saw him fathering a child out of wedlock and admitting to having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman during his rape trial in 2006. Critics have accused Zuma of taking a cavalier attitude to safe sex that is damaging government health campaigns in a country with one of the world's highest rates of HIV/AIDS.
    "My April results, like the three previous ones, registered a negative outcome for the HIV virus. I want to emphasise that by disclosing my HIV negative status, I am not putting pressure on any South African to do the same. It's my decision," said Zuma.
    Meanwhile, the provision of condoms has increased from 450 million in 2009 to 1.5-billion in 2010.
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