Durban’s Westville correctional facility, who originally took the government to court in an attempt to get access to antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, have criticised the treatment plan put forward by prison and government officiaACls for its “serious shortcomings”.
In a strongly worded affidavit submitted last Friday, Professor Jonathan Berger, a researcher with the Aids Law Project, said that the plan is less an account of how the departments of health and correctional services intend to comply with their constitutional obligations to provide ARV treatment, than “a convincing account of the very opposite”. Berger called for further court supervision and independent monitoring of treatment at the prison to ensure that the authorities addressed the inadequacies of the current plan.
By providing details of the prison’s ARV treatment plan, the government is finally complying with Justice Thumba Pillay’s June court order that sick HIV-positive prisoners receive treatment. The government departments and prison authorities had, in the interim, been accused of attempting to defy the order by lodging a series of appeals. The prisoners’ fight goes back to October last year when the Treatment Action Campaign began negotiating with prison and government authorities to provide HIV-positive prisoners access to ARVs. The matter eventually went to court in March this year. Of the 15 prisoners who initially launched legal action, one has died while another was released on medical parole.
Berger’s affidavit highlighted the plan’s major deficiencies with regards to treating those who are already infected and in containing the spread of HIV/Aids in a facility that holds about 14 000 prisoners.
Berger also questioned prison authorities’ claims that only 502 prisoners at the facility were HIV-positive and accused them of downplaying the prevalence of HIV/Aids in the facility. According to recent findings by the portfolio committee on correctional services, 1 500 prisoners at Westville are currently living with HIV/Aids.
The plan also failed to address the needs of specific groups within the prison, including women, children and prisoners awaiting trial. There was also no provision for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
Berger added that testing and monitoring were also inadequate, saying that the plan is “deathly silent on the need to educate prisoners of the benefits of an early HIV diagnosis, in particular timely access to ARV treatment”. He said this was particularly important since testing at the prison “appears to be conducted only when a prisoner becomes very ill”. He has also learned that the prison “only began actively to encourage prisoners to test for HIV as recently as September 10 2006” and that the plan also failed to provide details on the prevention and treatment of HIV-related opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis, herpes, hepatitis and oral candidiasis.
Berger also said that he found Westville prison’s distribution of an average of 800 condoms a month to be “woefully inadequate” in a prison with an estimated population of 14 000 inmates.
The government has until Friday to file a response. Berger has said that if it is unsatisfactory, the matter may end up in court again. The Aids Law Project will also file an affidavit based on findings from medical consultations held last week.