Johannesburg | Sunday
DEMOCRATIC Alliance leader Tony Leon welcomed the government’s decision to start supplying anti-retroviral treatments to pregnant women and rape victims at the weekend.
In a statement, Leon said that although this was a positive change, the government still needed to iron out contradictions in its official Aids policies.
”There is still a high degree of ‘political schizophrenia’ which can only be removed by decisive action,” Leon said.
He said that the question of whether Aids existed was still an issue based on the testimony of Peter Mokaba, ANC MP, who says that antiretrovirals are poison.
Leon points out that while government has agreed to give antiretrovirals to rape victims, they have still to retract the eviction of rape organisation Grip from hospital premises.
”On the one hand the cabinet calls for a roll-out of antiretrovirals but on the other hand persists with its appeal against a Pretoria High Court order to roll out nevirapine to pregnant women,” Leon said.
Leon said that the DA would call for the following action to be taken by the Government: implement plans, without delay, for universal access to antiretrovirals; withdraw its appeal to the Constitutional Court and put an end to the waste of public funds; ensure that all public officials and political advisors agree with the briefing’s premise that HIV causes Aids; apologise and re-instate Dr Von Mollendorff and Dr Naude, and allow Grip back into the Rob Ferreira Hospital.
Leon said: ”This ‘campaign of hope’ must not become an operation of despair. The DA says no more long-settled and time-wasting debates. Stop the spinning. Save the lives.’ Meanwhile, the Sunday Times newspaper reports that Mbeki has distanced himself and the government from Aids dissidents.
The newspaper said that according to senior government officials, Mbeki instructed the Health Ministry to write to the dissidents telling them to stop using his name when signing their correspondence.
Several dissident members of Mbeki’s Aids Advisory Panel, among them Americans David Rasnick and Peter Duesburg, have taken to using this designation when writing documents and signing letters to newspapers. – Sapa