Military defence is a far lower priority than the fight against AIDS, a disease killing 200 000 people a year, says Pan Africanist Congress health spokesman Costa Gazi.

He was responding to remarks made by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to a British newspaper on Tuesday that SA needed weapons more than AIDS drugs.

Speaking from the African National Congress (ANC) conference in Stellenbosch yesterday, Tshabalala-Msimang, did not deny her comments about weapons, but denied that she had suggested that the US planned to attack SA.

The minister was quoted in the Guardian as saying that budgetary priorities meant her department could not provide antiretrovirals to the estimated 4,5-million South Africans with HIV.

Asked if the money could be saved by omitting submarines from the multibillion rand arms deal, she said SA needed to deter aggressors.

Gazi said yesterday there was a "terror virus" attacking SA, with 15 000 new HIV infections a day, and it had not been prioritised by government. "We have a serious emergency in SA, as bad as any war, probably with more causalities, " he said.

Treatment Action Campaign chairman Zackie Achmat said that the minister was "an embarrassment to the department of health, the ANC and the government".

With acknowledgements to Chantelle Benjamin and Business Day.