Matthias Rath

Got a cure for AIDS? Maybe you're convinced that large doses of vitamins can do the trick or that you have found the answer scores of scientists over the last 25 years could not. If you live in South Africa there is little to prevent you from packaging your wonder product in an old coke bottle or a fancy pill container, depending on your means, and selling it for whatever price you can get.

The complementary medicine industry is embarking on a strict crackdown to try to stamp out the cowboys giving their business a bad name. The Health Products Association admits freely that a gap in the legislation governing the burgeoning complementary medicines industry has left an opening for people intent on making money, without the science to back up their claims.

Health-e News Service welcomes the decision by Dr Matthias Rath to withdraw his defamation case against the agency, employees Anso Thom and Khopotso Bodibe and freelancer Siviwe Minyi (case number 11681/05) and to pay our legal costs to date.

The World Health Organization (WHO) initiative to treat 3 million HIV-infected people in low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2005 (popularly known as the 3 by 5 initiative) has failed. Unrealistic assessments of how many people could be treated in the time frame explain the failure. But there has been additional fallout from the fiasco. Relations are frayed between WHO officials and South Africas health minister, who is trying to step up her nations AIDS treatment program responsibly. Additionally, because drugs were qualified for use before they had been properly tested and then later withdrawn, the 3 by 5 initiative added to uncertainty about how to proceed in many treatment programs around the world.

THIS promises to be another year of controversy, confusion and anxiety for South Africans on the health-care front, as government comes under renewed pressure to deal with its human resource crisis, speed up provision of AIDS drugs and implement a raft of new laws.

Western Cape's top health professionals have sent a petition to the provincial and national health departments calling on them to take decisive action against the Dr Rath Health Foundation for its damaging campaign against AIDS drugs.

The dispute between vitamins and micronutrients versus anti-retrovirals (ARVs) in the treatment of HIV/AIDS rages on.

THE ongoing debate on the efficacy of Highly Active An-tiretroviral Therapy (HAART) and Highly Active Vitamin Therapy (HAVT) has created confusion in the minds of government decision makers, corporate leaders, persons infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the general public.

Any hope that Health Minister Manto Tshabalala- Msimang would steer clear of controversy at the second national AIDS conference was dashed even before proceedings formally opened yesterday.