Durban: South Africa's controversial health minister has withdrawn from a major Aids conference because organisers did not give her a prominent place in the programme, the deputy president said on Tuesday.
"The minister withdrew from the programme because of the place you put her in the programme," deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said of minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
She made the comments in a speech at the opening session of the country's third Aids conference in Durban, criticising organisers for placing the minister on the event's sidelines.
Tshabalala-Msimang was not included in the opening ceremony on Tuesday evening but had been scheduled to speak in a session yesterday alongside Aids activists and researchers.
She has been a pivotal figure in South Africa's HIV/Aids crisis since becoming health minister in 1999, engaging in bitter debates with Aids activists and at times appearing to question accepted HIV science.
Condemnation
Tshabalala-Msimang drew international condemnation at last year's world Aids conference in Toronto for promoting garlic and beetroot as treatments for HIV. She was scheduled to resume her post yesterday after recovering from a liver transplant operation.
The conference has drawn Aids researchers from around the world amid tentative signs South Africa is finally embracing mainstream approaches to fighting the epidemic.
Hopes of a shift in South Africa's attitude to a disease affecting nearly 12 per cent of its 47 million people have been building since the government in March unveiled a revamped Aids strategy, including an expanded rollout of life-saving drugs.
