JOHANNESBURG (Reuters):

South Africa sees up to one million people being on anti-retroviral drugs by 2011 under a national plan to fight AIDS, a disease that is estimated to kill 1,000 South Africans a day, officials said last Friday.

South Africa launched a five-year HIV/AIDS strategy last year, vowing to cut new infections and deliver treatment and support to at least 80 per cent of millions of its people infected with HIV by 2011.

Officials will present a final draft of the plan to a health summit next week after which it will be approved and adopted by the country's National AIDS Council.

Acting Health Minister Jeff Radebe, who is standing in for the controversial, ailing Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, called the plan a huge step in the right direction.

"There is an emerging consensus on what needs to be done in South Africa. Our job is to make sure this does not fail," Radebe told a news conference.

More than five million of South Africa's 45 million people are already believed to be infected with HIV, while close to two million people have died from the disease.