South Africans are using some 75 percent more condoms this year than last, an indication HIV/AIDS awareness programmers are working, Deputy President Jacob Zuma said Monday.
"The demand for free condoms issued by government has increased from 200 million last year to about 350 million this year," Zuma told a gathering in this Free State Province town to mark the second anniversary of the government's Partnership Against Aids campaign.
Zuma, in contrast to President Thabo Mbeki, made a clear link between HIV and AIDS.
Mbeki has come under increasing fire in recent weeks for failing to state unambiguously that the HI virus causes AIDS.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, meanwhile, described as malicious a Sunday newspaper report revealing that members of parliament had access to AIDS drug AZT, which the state is refusing to give to pregnant women or to rape victims.
Tshabala said parliamentarians had nothing to do with the fact that their medical aid scheme made provision for the prescription of this drug.
"MPs are members of the medical aid scheme, no different from people who belong to other medical aid schemes who use the same benefits to shop around for what they must use," Tshabalala-Msimang said.
"AZT is available out there in the private sector. In the public sector it is not because we cannot afford it. That is the truth of the matter," Tshabalala-Msimang said.
The Johannesburg Sunday Times, which carried the report, pointed out that anti-AIDS drugs for parliamentarians are subsidized by taxpayers as the state pays two-thirds of members' monthly premiums to the medical aid scheme -- WELKOM, South Africa(AFP)
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