The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has filed an urgent application in the Cape High Court for an interdict against the activities of controversial vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath.
It has also asked the court to find that Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and her department have a duty to stop Rath, and to order them to report back on what they are doing.
The application, which is backed by the South African Medical Association (Sama), the professional body representing most doctors in South Africa, follows a string of complaints about Rath to the Medicines Control Council (MCC) — which has yet to make a public finding.
However, Tshabalala-Msimang told Parliament last week that preliminary findings by her department’s investigators, whose report will go to the MCC, were that Dr Rath Health Foundation patients were merely being ”counselled on healthy lifestyles and the importance of good nutrition intake”.
In the application, copies of which were released at a media briefing in Cape Town on Tuesday, the TAC accuses Rath and his foundation of selling and distributing unregistered medicines and making false claims that they are effective in treating or preventing Aids.
The TAC also says Rath and the foundation conduct unauthorised and unethical clinical trials, and that they make false statements that anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) are ineffective in treating Aids and are poisonous.
”To the best of my knowledge, the minister of health has never taken any action to discourage the Rath respondents from continuing their unlawful activities,” TAC policy coordinator Nathan Geffen says in a founding affidavit. ”On the contrary … her conduct has actually encouraged them to persist in these unlawful activities.”
‘Humanitarian project’
Reacting to the TAC application, Rath foundation spokesperson Ralf Langner said the foundation is donating a vitamin programme to the South African National Civics Organisation, which in turn makes it available free of charge to people with HIV/Aids ”to support their health naturally”.
”To sue a humanitarian project like that is a testimony to the total moral bankruptcy of the TAC, that makes its budget of R22-million from drug-producing countries,” he said.
This money comes from the ”dubious philanthropy” of corporate foundations.
”We are honoured that we are on the side of the South African government in that lawsuit against those corporate interests,” he said.
”If anyone is running around telling you we promise a cure, we never did. But we can reverse symptoms — without side effects.”
Sama vice-chairperson Prof Denise White told the media briefing that her organisation has joined the litigation because it feels it is morally and ethically obliged to take a stand for people who do not have the means to speak out to protect their health and their lives.
The application cites as co-respondents Aids dissident and Medunsa academic Dr Sam Mhlongo, Western Cape health minister Pierre Uys and MCC chairperson Peter Eagles.
‘Illegal experiments’
Rath, a German national, has been criticised for his activities in Cape Town’s black townships, where the TAC says he has conducted illegal experiments.
There have been reports that several of his ”patients” have died.
However, he is suing Health-e news service over the reports, along with a number of other individuals and organisations — including the South African Press Association — he feels have defamed him.
The TAC itself is suing Rath for defamation, for implying it is in league with pharmaceutical companies in its support for ARVs.
Health ministry spokesperson Sibani Mngadi confirmed that the department has received the TAC court papers.
”The matter has been referred to our legal unit and the department will respond accordingly to this matter,” he said.
”We do not agree with the TAC’s assertion that anti-retroviral drugs are the only scientifically proven intervention to reverse the course of Aids.
”And their latest legal threats will not divert the Department of Health from its objective of making a series of services available to improve health of people living with HIV and Aids.”
These included voluntary counselling and testing, and nutrition including vitamin supplementation.
The TAC has, in fact, claimed not that ARVs are ”the only scientifically proven intervention” to reverse Aids, but that they are ”the only scientifically proven medicines” to do this. — Sapa