Former president Nelson Mandela is to take up the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) call for antiretroviral (ARVs) drugs for people with HIV directly with President Thabo Mbeki.
The TAC recently won a major court battle after the Constitutional Court gave the final go-ahead for anti-Aids treatment to HIV-positive pregnant mothers — almost a year after the battle between the government and Aids activists started.
Mandela made the announcement on Saturday after meeting in Cape Town with TAC leader Zackie Achmat, who is himself HIV-positive and is refusing ARVs until the government starts making them available for treatment in state health facilities.
The meeting was held at Achmat’s home in Muizenberg.
”What I’ve come here to do is to find out under what conditions he will then be able to take treatment,” Mandela told journalists after the meeting.
Mandela who has recently been increasingly outspoken on Aids issues said: ”He (Zackie) has informed me and I don’t want to go into details about what we have discussed… but I think that I’ve got a case to take to the president of the country and to acquaint him with what his position is”.
The former president said it would have been futile for him to try to get Achmat to start taking the drugs because his position was that he would not as long as ARVs were not available to everyone, especially the poor.
He said Achmat was a role model and his stand was based on a fundamental principal ”which we all admire”. This admiration extended beyond South Africa’s borders.
Mandela said Achmat was a loyal, disciplined member of the African National Congress (ANC) and his action was not aimed at the party or the government, and he (Mandela) would explain that to Mbeki.
”But I hope you will not probe me about things which we are going to discuss with the president of the country. It is sufficient for me to say that I now understand his stand and I know under what conditions he will be prepared to take treatment,” Mandela said.
Asked what he thought the ideal government position on ARVs would be, Mandela said he wanted to avoid that question.
He said he supported the government’s stance that research into ARVs in an African context was necessary to ensure that if there was a role-out, the drugs would be safe.
”But of course what worries everybody is the number of people who are dying almost daily.”
Achmat said that TAC was humbled by Mandela’s visit and that the most important thing about it was that it focused on the number of people who were dying unnecessarily and from preventable illnesses.
He said: ”We are saying we want the government to provide ARVs to some degree in the public sector, but also important from our point of view is proper treatment of opportunistic infections”.
Achmat said he had been apprehensive that Mandela would try to talk him out of his personal stand on ARVs.
”I was scared the whole time that I knew Madiba was coming because personally one can’t refuse him things, but as Madiba has said it’s a principle stand and we’ll talk about it later.”
Achmat who was recently bedridden with what was initially feared to be tuberculosis, but which supporters said on Saturday was serious bronchitis, said his immune system was still seriously compromised, but ”I’m looking much healthier than anyone can say”. – Sapa