CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) - More than 235,000 South Africans with AIDS are receiving anti-retroviral medicines in the public health sector, up 55,000 from the end of June, the government said Monday.
Officials said this proved the government's commitment to giving free drugs to all those in need.
For years, the government of the country with the second-largest number of people with HIV/AIDS in the world was criticized for doing to little to provide life-prolonging treatment to people displaying symptoms of full-blown AIDS.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang came in for especially damning condemnation for her promotion of garlic and lemons as a remedy and for publicly expressing mistrust of anti-retrovirals.
But Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka recently assumed control of AIDS policy and mended fences with AIDS activists once shunned by the government.
The government is to unveil a new five year prevention, treatment and care strategy on Dec. 1 — World AIDS Day, setting a target of 650,000 people on treatment by 2011, according to the medical wire, Health E-News.
A statement from the Health Ministry said that by the end of September, 235,378 people had been initiated on anti-retroviral drugs at 273 licensed hospitals and clinics.
An estimated additional 80,000 people with AIDS are receiving treatment in the private sector.
"The increase in the number of people initiated on treatment and the number of service points endorses the view that South Africa has the fastest growing anti-retroviral program in the world," it said.
South Africa has now outstripped Brazil, which pioneered the concept of universal access to anti-retroviral treatment, in the number of people on therapy.
South Africa has an estimated 5.4 million people with HIV/AIDS, the second highest in the world after India. An estimated 19 percent of the adult population, and 30 percent of pregnant women, is infected with the virus, according to government figures. An estimated 900 people die each day because of the disease.
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