SOUTH AFRICA CLAIMS AIDS TREATMENT ON SCHEDULE

South Africa's government claims to have exceeded its own targets for HIV/AIDS treatment, dispensing ARVs to 61,000 people in the first year of a national campaign. The original target was 53,000, but officials note that the scheme is not being adequately monitored, and the proportion of the 61,000 sufferers still taking the drugs is not known.

This success will be welcomed by interest groups, but the government treatment programme has been criticised as unambitious and slow to roll out in view of the scale of the problem. Roughly 9mn South Africans are HIV positive, and some private companies report that employees remain reluctant to receive ARVs or submit to testing. Rural areas are also still inadequately supplied.