There was an interesting insight into the mentality of the Swaziland Government following the news that one in five children in the kingdom who are HIV-positive may have caught the virus as a result of medical negligence.
The first stance of anyone in authority in the kingdom was to deny there was a problem.
So nothing new there then.
But then up pops the Principal Secretary Dr Steven Shongwe at the Ministry of Health. We can’t trust the academics who conducted the research (and had it published in the International Journal of STD and HIV, of the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV) because the Swazi Government hadn’t given the researchers permission to carry out the research.
‘There is a Ministry of Health Scientific and Ethics Committee that approves any health related research. With regard to this particular study, the committee is not privy to any application or approval of the study by any organisation or individual. Therefore, the information contained might not necessarily provide the official position of the issues raised,’ he told the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.
So there you have it. Only information officially sanctioned by the government is allowed in Swaziland.
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