SHE,S BACK - HEALTH MINISTER MANTO

C O N F I D E N T I A L PRETORIA 002106 SIPDIS SIPDIS DHHS FOR OGHA, CDC ATLANTA FOR STEVE BLOUNT, USAID FOR GH/KENT HILL AND KEN YAMASHITA E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/11/2017 TAGS: ECON SOCI PGOV PREL SF SUBJECT: SHE,S BACK - HEALTH MINISTER MANTO TSHABALALA-MSIMANG RETURNS TO OFFICE SIPDIS REF: A. PRETORIA 1965 ¶B. 06 PRETORIA 04320 ¶C. 06 PRETORIA 01965 Classified By: Charge' d'Affaires Don Teitelbaum for Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (U) South Africa's Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang resumed 100 percent of her duties as Health Minister on June 6, 2007 following a three-month absence to recover from a liver transplant. Her first action was to decline participation in the 3rd Annual South African Aids Conference in Durban (June 5 to 8),letting it be known that she was upset at not being given a more prominent role than a plenary speaker at the meeting. Conference participants from the government, NGOs and international organizations proclaimed greater consensus than ever before on fighting HIV/AIDS while recognizing that South Africa was far from turning the corner in beating the disease. On June 7, Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang gave the Health Department's annual budget speech to Parliament, using combative language against those she views as opponents of her health agenda, including private hospitals, medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies and AIDS activists. &I am now well, re- energized and committed to ensuring that we proceed with the reforms in the health sector that we started,8 she said. End Summary. -------------- Back to the Office -------------- ¶2. (U) President Thabo Mbeki announced on June 5, 2007 that Health Minister Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was resuming her duties as Minister immediately. The Minister had undergone a liver transplant on March 14 for what was officially called an autoimmune hepatitis. She was easing back into the job over the last month by spending time reading papers in her office and attending the ANC National Executive Committee meetings (see Reftel A for additional background on the Minister's gradual return). However, the suddenness of the announcement and her resumption of full duty came as a surprise to many. -------------- Shunning the Annual Aids Conference -------------- ¶3. (C) Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang was scheduled to speak at the plenary session of the 3rd Annual South African Aids Conference in Durban on June 6. However, she declined to participate at the last minute. Speaking at the opening ceremony, Deputy President and keynote speaker Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka criticized conference organizers for not giving the Health Minister a more prominent speaking role and putting at risk progress made in developing &an environment we are building to fight the (AIDS) battle together.8 Conference organizers told the U.S. Consulate in Durban that the Minister was acting like a "petulant child" and that her place in the program had been agreed to by her office right up until the day before the conference began. Deputy Health Minister Nizizwe Madlala-Routledge, who has differed in the development of a new national strategic plan to fight HIV/AIDS during the Minister's absence, also withdrew at the last minute from giving a speech at the conference. The conference was the official venue for distributing the finalized South African National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS and STIs 2007-2011. Both the Minister and Deputy Minister explained that they needed to prepare for the Health Department's June 7 budget speech to Parliament. ¶4. (C) Two joint PEPFAR-Health Department press events planned for the week of the conference were also canceled, apparently because of the Minister's last-minute decision not to attend. Although neither event featured the participation of the Minister, Health Department media officials indicated to the Embassy PAO that given the diminished role of the Minister, they thought it best to &temporarily withdraw from such cooperative arrangements.8 ¶5. (C) The conference was a success despite the shadow cast over the event by the manner in which the Minister returned. Participants from government, NGOs and international organizations repeatedly expressed their view that there was greater consensus than ever before on how to move forward in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Many participants, including provincial government and civil society leaders (but not national government officials),acknowledged the work supported by PEPFAR. There was also a sense of realism surrounding the conference, with a recognition that while there was progress, South Africa was not yet close to turning the corner on HIV/AIDS. The "small wins" in treatment and other areas were gratifying but infections were rising faster than any current interventions could even hope to slow them down. Presenters also cautioned that failure to contain the spread of extremely drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) could worsen the HIV/AIDS epidemic due to the high rate of TB and HIV co-infection in South Africa. -------------- Back to Parliament -------------- ¶6. (U) Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang stated in her June 7 speech to Parliament that she was &committed to ensuring that we proceed with the reforms in the health sector that we started.8 Citing the hearing on health services held recently by the Human Rights Commission, she also promised legislation to address inequities between public and private health care. She faulted private hospitals for spending R66 billion (USD 9.4 billion) on treating only 7 million people while the state had only R59 billion (USD 8.4 billion) for the treatment of more than 30 million people. She promised that as part of this effort she would bring amendments to the Medical Schemes Act to establish a risk-equalization fund. According to the Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang, &The risk-equalization fund is one of the crucial elements in the establishment of a social health insurance, which is a step towards a national health insurance.8 ¶7. (U) Discussing medicine pricing and the impending international benchmarking of drug prices by the government, Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang stated that the Medical Schemes Council would be looking into claims that private sector hospitals were increasing hospital charges to compensate for lost revenues. She added that she had asked the National Health Research Council to look into the ethical standards used in an anti-HIV microbicide trial that was suspended last February when it was found that women using the microbicide were at greater risk of getting HIV infection than those who were not using the chemical. She also announced that the Health Department would be recruiting more foreign doctors to work in South Africa to help meet the severe shortage of health care professionals. these doctors would be from Iran and Tunisia. This angered medical professionals who are contesting the non-selection of some qualified white South African colleagues for positions in Western Cape hospitals because of affirmative action programs. ¶8. (C) True to her previous positions on HIV/AIDS, Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang said that &statistically significant SIPDIS drops" in HIV infection rates among pregnant mothers using public health facilities was due to the Health Department's focus on prevention and healthy lifestyles. Local statisticians and health experts do not consider these drops to be statistically significant and believe they lie within a statistical margin of error. They believe that further data and analysis will be needed to determine a true drop in infection rates. The Health Minister also attributed a decline in infant mortality to nutrition and immunization programs. There was no mention of the use of antiretrovirals in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. There was also a stand of fruit and vegetables (but no garlic or beetroot) on prominent display in the Parliament's lobby and among materials promoting TB control, coronary health disease, and other health programs for review by the Parliamentarians. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶9. (C) Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang should not be too quick to criticize the country's private hospitals. Many of the emergency cases that are being turned away from the public hospitals that have been closed due to the ongoing public sector workers, strike are being cared for by the private hospitals, almost all of which are still open. The private Hospital Association of South Africa even went so far as to approach the government on the first day of the strike and ask that the public hospital's emergency cases be sent to them. Even so, three persons are reported to have died in Durban over the past weekend because they were turned away from public hospitals. Confirming the role that the critical role that private hospitals are playing in addressing the country's emergency healthy care needs, the public sector unions said that this week they would be targeting the private hospitals and schools that have not yet joined the nation-wide strike. Finally, Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang received her liver transplant last March at the Donald Gordon Medical Institute in Johannesburg. The Institute is a public-private partnership owned by the Medical School at Wits University and operated in partnership with a private hospital group. If it were not for the private part of the public-private partnership, it is doubtful that the Institute would have had the highly skilled surgeons needed to carry out the transplant. End Comment. Teitelbaum