S Africa minister denies Aids gag

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South Africa's controversial health minister has denied reports that she has been sidelined from the fight against HIV/Aids.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told the state broadcaster, SABC, that she welcomed a new inter-ministerial committee on Aids, led by the deputy president.

Ms Tshabalala-Msimang has been condemned for stressing the health properties of beetroot and garlic.

Last week, a group of international experts said she was an embarrassment.

They wrote a letter to President Thabo Mbeki, saying she should be sacked.

South Africa has some 5.5m people with HIV - more than any other country, except India.

'Dying unnecessarily'

When the new government committee was set up on Friday, government spokesman Themba Maseko said: "We need to shift focus from saying the problem in the programme is the minister of health."

This was seen as a way of improving the South Africa's image, without giving in to the calls to sack Ms Tshabalala-Msimang, also known as "Dr Beetroot".

Ms Tshabalala-Msimang is also known as 'Dr Beetroot'But she told SABC:

"The establishment of the IMC [inter-ministerial committee] is not a new thing, we have had an IMC before. It probably wasn't functioning as well as it should have functioned. I have always been part of the IMC so I welcome the establishment and reinforcement of the IMC."

South African Aids activists have long criticised Ms Tshabalala-Msimang and the government as a whole for their reluctance to provide anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to those with HIV.

The scientists, who include 1975 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine David Baltimore and Robert Gallo, the developer of the first HIV blood test and co-discoverer of HIV as the cause of Aids, said last week that these were the only proven way of reducing the effects of HIV.

"Many people [in South Africa] are dying unnecessarily" because they cannot get Aids drugs, the letter said.

At an international Aids conference in Toronto last month, United Nations special envoy for Aids in Africa Stephen Lewis said South Africa promoted a "lunatic fringe" attitude to HIV/Aids.