HIV vaccine is needed, says a South African minister. An HIV vaccine is needed, says South Africa’s new Health Minister Barbara Hogan, reports the BBC. She also said that HIV caused AIDS without a doubt, and that anti-retroviral drugs were the best way to treat the illness. Hogan’s words are music to the ears of the country’s AIDS activists who spent years battling the ideas of the former health minister, Manto Tshabala-Msimang. Tshabala-Msimang (or Dr. Beetroot as some called her) refused to believe that conventional medicine was the best treatment for HIV and further stated that healthy eating alone could treat the disease better. While Hogan did not directly criticize Tshabala-Msimang, she indicated the country, which has about 5.5 million people living with HIV, was losing the battle against AIDS. “It was imperative to get ahead of the curve of this epidemic 10 years ago,” she said to an international AIDS vaccine conference in Cape Town. “We all have lost ground. It’s even more imperative now that we make HIV prevention work. We desperately need an effective HIV vaccine,” she said. Malegapuru Makgoba, who head the University of KwaZulu-Natal, was happy that the nation’s academics could now “state that HIV causes AIDS without getting threats.”

Sudan’s government investigates militia leader. The Sudanese government recently finished investigating one of the nation’s notorious militia leaders who is accused of committing war crimes in Darfur, reports Reuters. The government often had been criticized for not going after such militia heads. Ali Kushayb, along with two others, was arrested for violence in the troubled Darfur region. “The investigations were about killing and looting. The investigations have taken place. There were investigations about Kushayb and two other people,” Sudan’s Justice Undersecretary Abdel Daim Zumrawi said. “The prosecutors have collected all the evidence against them. I am not sure whether it will be placed before a court … Kushayb has been under arrest for a long time.” The government had often been criticized for not going after such militia heads. And the investigation, which began earlier this year, happened after an International Criminal Court prosecutor asked authorities to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The prosecutor accused him of leading genocide in the region. The ICC had also issued warrants for Kushayb and Ahmed Haroun, Sudan’s minister for humanitarian affairs, accusing the two of committing war crimes. The country, though, has refused to turn them in. Since it started in 2003, the conflict in Darfur has killed an estimated 200,000 people and made 2.5 million homeless.

TAGS: HIV, militia leader, South Africa, Sudan

Comments (3)