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Activists Criticize South Africa's Investment in AIDS Treatments

Aired July 10, 2000 - 6:11 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BERNARD SHAW, CNN ANCHOR: Now to South Africa, the site of an international AIDS conference. Experts are predicting Africa's AIDS epidemic will cut life expectancies in some countries to age 30, the lowest in a century. Meantime, they are discussing plans to provide free medicine, loans and education programs.

Also, there's been criticism. Activists say governments and drug companies have not been doing enough to make treatments more widely available.

Our CNN medical correspondent Eileen O'Connor introduces us to one of the more fortunate HIV patients.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. GLENDA GRAY, CHRIS HANI BARAGWANATH HOSPITAL: How's your baby?

BUSISIWE ZLULU, HIV POSITIVE MOTHER: She's doing fine. She's growing up.

EILEEN O'CONNOR, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Busisiwe Zlulu is 15 years old and a first-time mother. She's also HIV positive.

GRAY: How does it make you feel?

ZLULU: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

O'CONNOR: Zlulu says she only had sex once, with an 18-year-old man who ran away as soon as he heard she was pregnant, before she could tell him that she and he were carrying the virus that causes AIDS.

ZLULU: I didn't think that he was HIV positive.

O'CONNOR (on camera): Why?

ZLULU: Just he looked normal to me.

O'CONNOR: Yet she is one of the lucky ones. Access to clean water enables her to bottle-feed Nadzo (ph). That and doses of AZT means that Zlulu's daughter may escape her mother's death sentence and remain free of the disease.

(on camera): South African officials here at this AIDS conference say they are prepared to widen the use of drugs like AZT, especially Vivarapin (ph). Studies show just two doses of that drug, one given to the mother at the on set of labor and one to the baby immediately after, can cut mother to child transmission rates in half.

(voice-over): Dr. Glenda Gray, director of the clinic here in Soweto, says until now she has had to enroll these young woman in clinical trials just to access the medications. Because these drugs were never that expensive, she believes the South African government could have made this move earlier but didn't, sending this message to the mothers she treats.

GRAY: I don't think that I value your life enough to give you a drug that costs $4 U.S., that costs 24 rand. You're not important to me and I'd rather let your child die of HIV.

O'CONNOR: It's a feeling 15-year-old Busisiwe Zlulu knows all too well.

ZLULU: If you are HIV positive, no one wants you. No one treats you the way they would treat humans, like they hate you.

O'CONNOR: Dr. Gray says Zlulu is special, because unlike many here she is willing to talk about her disease in the hope that by breaking the silence she can prevent others from suffering her fate.

What I find really devastating is the fact that (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a special child who's dreams won't be realized.

O'CONNOR: Dreams that included watching her own child grow.

Eileen O'Connor, CNN, Durban, South Africa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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