OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday
AN Aids activism group backing the South African government in a court battle with pharmaceutical giants demanded on Monday that the state devise a plan for giving Aids sufferers access to drugs.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said government must say how much money it would spend on Aids testing, on medicines to treat opportunistic infections and on anti-retrovirals for the country’s estimated 4.2 million people living with HIV and Aids.
“The government must issue a clear treatment plan with details of the money available and how they will improve access [to treatment],” TAC secretary Mark Heywood said on the opening day of its two-day national congress.
The South African government has so far refused to make anti-retrovirals available on public health, citing concerns about the safety of the drug and its own ability to distribute it.
Heywood said TAC had invited President Thabo Mbeki to attend the congress and spell out the government’s position.
“We want him to hear from people who have HIV and need anti-retrovirals and we want to listen to his views.”
Mbeki’s office, however, said it had not yet received the invitation by late Monday.
The congress has brought together 500 people from 169 organisations – including trade unions, religious groups and the health profession – as well as participants from Botswana and Swaziland.
TAC representative Nathan Geffen said “delegates expressed tremendous anger and anguish at the state of the public health care system and the lack of medicines in hospitals and clinics.”
The TAC has relentlessly lobbied the government for access to Aids drugs and last year took the president and his health minister to task for questioning the link between HIV and Aids.
But it has taken the government’s side in a landmark court case in which 39 pharmaceutical companies are challenging a South African law that allows the government to import or produce cheaper versions of branded drugs.
The Pretoria High Court last month ruled that the TAC could present a submission on the plight of people with HIV/Aids and their need for cheaper drugs when the case resumes in April.
“Treatment is a matter of urgency … and we have been successful in putting treatment on the agenda,” Thanduxolo Doro, a founding member of the TAC, said on Monday. – AFP
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