A campaign to stop controversial German vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath from conducting ”illegal” HIV trials in South Africa will be stepped up, three organisations said on Wednesday.
”We are convinced there will be a catastrophe [if Rath continues with the trials],” Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) president Willie Madisha said. ”He has got to be stopped.”
Madisha was speaking at an announcement that Cosatu, the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) have joined forces to increase civil society’s fight against HIV/Aids.
Their effort will include devising a national HIV prevention plan to break the stigma attached to the epidemic and encourage massive voluntary HIV testing.
It will also aim to increase the number of people on anti-retrovirals (ARVs) to at least 200 000 by mid-2006.
A part of the programme will be stopping the ”unlawful activities of Rath and similar charlatans and to make our communities aware of the dangers to them posed by false promises and information about HIV”, Madisha said.
On Rath, SACC spokesperson Joe Mdhlela said: ”We think that this is very problematic.”
One reason the SACC is unhappy that Rath is being ”embraced by the powers that be” is because this causes confusion on how to treat HIV/Aids.
TAC executive member Nonkosi Khumalo agreed, saying the country’s leadership should make a stand on the issue.
She said the TAC plans to take a number of people to court, including the Department of Health and the Medicines Control Council (MCC), with the aim of stopping Rath’s trials in the Western and Eastern Cape.
The Rath Foundation advocates its vitamin products as a treatment for HIV/Aids. It claims ARVs are toxic, and that the TAC, which advocates the use of the drugs, is a front for the pharmaceutical industry.
There have been reports recently of the deaths of people taking part in Rath’s trials.
The trials have not been approved by any research ethics committee, nor have they been subjected to scientific scrutiny, according to the University of the Witwatersrand.
Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has been criticised for not distancing herself from certain claims by the foundation.
Government action
The Department of Health was criticised by the three organisations on Wednesday for its actions on HIV/Aids.
Although prepared to work with the department, they believe the epidemic will not be curbed as long as Rath and ”similar charlatans” are embraced.
On Monday, a report by the United Nations and World Health Organisation found that at least 85% of South Africans needing ARVs had not received them by mid-2005.
It said the country’s Aids crises shows no signs of abating.
In reaction, the Department of Health said the government’s inaction before 1994 is the main reason why the HIV infection has not been curbed.
Asked to comment, Khumalo said it has been 11 years since the country became a democracy and blaming the apartheid government for the country’s epidemic has to stop.
Since 1994, there have been many good actions to curb the epidemic, particularly in the North West, Western Cape and Gauteng.
However, the organisations lament the continued refusal by the national government to declare the seriousness of the epidemic and respond to it on the necessary scale.
A great concern is that the country does not have a national HIV-prevention plan for next year, Khumalo said.
Additional evidence of the lack of the government’s response is the continued ineffectiveness of the South African National Aids Council (Sanac) and the failure to roll out ARVs.
Madisha said only 70 000 people of an estimated 500 000 people with Aids are receiving ARVs in the public health sector.
The organisations called for a national HIV-prevention summit, presidential leadership on the epidemic and the strengthening of Sanac.
The three organisations’ campaign will be officially launched on World Aids Day in Durban on December 1. — Sapa