The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) on Friday distanced itself from a newspaper report stating that the feud between the government and Aids activists might be coming to an end.
TAC chair Zackie Achmat said the Aids lobbyist group would not attend an upcoming health summit on the government’s Aids policy.
”As far as I know, we were never invited and we do not have any intention of attending the summit.”
The Star newspaper reported that the Health Department had invited the TAC, among others, to be present at the meeting next week.
The newspaper quoted TAC national manager Nathan Geffen, who on Friday refused to comment on the story, referring Sapa to Achmat.
The report said it was a ”groundbreaking invitation” that pointed to a ”thawing of relations between the organisation and the government”.
Achmat, however, said the TAC was not involved in the health summit.
”The department’s having its own summit which obviously doesn’t have anything to do with us… we have a lot of work that we have to get on with. We are asking the department to develop a national treatment plan. We hope this summit will contribute towards that,” he said.
Achmat, who is HIV-positive, is refusing to take antiretroviral treatment until the government starts making it available to all those suffering from the disease.
The Constitutional Court earlier this year ruled in favour of the TAC that nevirapine be made available to HIV-positive pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child-transmission. The judgement came after the government tried to appeal a similar high court order.
The Health Department was not available on Friday afternoon to comment on the upcoming summit. – Sapa