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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/14/1058034954150.html
The lives of more than 1.7 million HIV-infected South Africans could be saved by 2010 if the government made AIDS drugs available immediately, according to a government study quoted in a newspaper yesterday.
The study was compiled by officials from the health and finance departments to determine the cost and impact of a national AIDS drug program.
The report was completed five months ago but not released. The Cape Times newspaper said it was leaked to politicians and trade unions by the Treatment Action Campaign, an AIDS activist group warring with the government over its sluggish approach to combating the AIDS pandemic.
More than five million South Africans are infected with HIV, the highest number of infected people in the world.
The government has resisted beginning a wide-scale program to distribute AIDS
medicine to the infected, and some government officials have questioned the
effectiveness of the drugs, which have turned AIDS from a death sentence to a
chronic disease in the developed world.