Anti-Aids drugs will be more accessible to prisoners in KwaZulu-Natal after threats of a hunger strike and a letter of demand was sent to prison authorities earlier this week.
”The prison’s HIV/Aids coordinator is negotiating with the Department of Health so that we can get two accredited anti-retroviral [ARV] sites,” said Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Nonala Ndlovu.
She could not say where the sites will be located.
Ndlovu said prisoners currently receive ARVs through the Department of Health. This means that if doctors recommend that inmates be given ARVs, they are transported to one of the sites where ARVs are administered.
However, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in Durban said prisoners are ”definitely not getting ARVs” and only have access to medication for opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis and influenza.
TAC spokesperson S’thembiso Mkhize said: ”If the health department can’t reach their ARV targets on the outside, how can they manage to roll it out in the prisons?”
Mkhize said the TAC is ”pushing” the ARV roll-out, and so far only 63 000 people are on ARVs nationally. The organisation has given the department a target of 200 000 by February next year.
He said prisoners also have to wait up to three weeks to see a doctor.
The memorandum of demands of prisoners in the Medium B section of Westville prison also called for the release of prisoners with a CD4 count of less than 200, permission to receive fruit from visitors and take it to their cells, and continuing Aids counselling.
Mkhize said a CD4 count — an indicator of how healthy the immune system is — is not enough to determine whether people qualify for ARVs because their general state of health and the presence of opportunistic infections also play a role.
Prisoner representatives, the South African Prisoners Organisation for Human Rights (Sapohr) and the TAC will meet on Monday to discuss the issues.
On Wednesday, Sapohr threatened legal action against the ministers of correctional services and health for failing to provide Aids drugs to prisoners. Sapohr’s spokesperson in KwaZulu-Natal, Derek Mdluli, said the prisoners will hand a memorandum of demands to his organisation on Monday, and Sapohr will then serve notices on the ministers ”asking them why the prisoners are not getting drugs”.
”If we do not get a response or the response we want, we will make an urgent application to the high court to compel them to give ARVs to prisoners,” said Mdluli.
On Wednesday, Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Graham Abrahams said: ”While we do not have any accredited ARV sites at correctional centres, our working relationship with provincial health departments is such that referrals are made”. — Sapa