HEALTH-SOUTH AFRICA: AIDS Activists Wary of Broken Promises

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Anthony Stoppard

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 12 2003 (IPS) - Wary of broken promises, anti-HIV and AIDS activists are keeping a guarded eye on the South African government, despite its most concrete commitment to develop a comprehensive treatment plan for people living with the disease by the end of September.

The department of health says its officials are already meeting to hammer-out the details of the plan to roll-out a treatment programme.

While South Africa has an impressive HIV/AIDS awareness programme, the government had been accused of dragging its feet in rolling out a comprehensive treatment plan, despite an estimated 4.7 million South Africans living with the disease – the largest number in any country.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which has been at the forefront of efforts to force government to make anti-retrovirals freely available in the public health system, estimates that about 600 South Africans die of AIDS-related illness every day. Anti-retrovirals are drugs which ease the effects of the HIV/AIDS and reduce the spread of the disease.

Despite the ever growing death toll, the Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, has repeatedly cast doubts on the effectiveness of anti-retrovirals and warned that they are toxic. While most researchers accept that anti-retrovirals are dangerous, they insist that presently they are the most effective way to treating the disease.

In recent months, government has come under increasing pressure from within its own ranks, business community, civil society and trade unions to make anti-retrovirals freely available in the public health system.

Citing the proven effectiveness of the drugs, South African mining and financial houses, among other businesses, have offered the medication to their employees, and their families, who are affected with HIV/AIDS – effectively ignoring government’s skepticism about the usefulness of the drugs.

Government is also facing an election early next year and initial indications are that its foot-dragging on providing the medication to those who need it was going to emerge as a major issue during the poll.

Another turning point was the release of details of a report by a government task team which found that government could afford to provide anti-retrovirals. The report found that providing anti-retrovirals could save between 500,000 and 1.7 million lives over the next five to ten years. Government fiddled with the report for months before TAC leaked the findings to the media. With the conclusions of its own task team revealed, government no longer had any excuses for delaying providing anti-retrovirals.

And, so last week, the government announced that it would provide the drugs.

Welcoming the decision, the TAC said: "This is a critical step to develop a more comprehensive treatment and prevention plan for managing the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Properly implemented, this will restore hope, dignity and life for millions of people in our country, and, hope throughout the continent".

"The TAC National Executive will formally suspend the civil disobedience campaign and reconsider pending litigation early next week. We welcome cabinet’s bold step but we also remember the anguish, pain and unnecessary loss of lives over the last four years," said TAC.

TAC has been running a civil disobedience campaign and has repeatedly taken the government to court to get legal backing for its demands that anti-retrovirals be made freely available in the public health system.

Anti-HIV and AIDS activists are eagerly waiting to see details of the government’s plan, especially how many people they intend to reach and how fast they will roll-out the treatment programme. Cabinet has already cautioned that it could take up to nine months before the drugs reach many of those who need them.

Last week, President, Thabo Mbeki signed a funding agreement with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. The agreement, worth R300 million (40 million U.S. dollars), has been held up in bureaucratic wrangling for almost two years.

The South African government had been accused of delaying the agreement because some of the funds were earmarked for providing anti-retrovirals to people living with HIV/AIDS. The way has now been cleared for the funds to be released to South Africa and to be used in the fight against HIV/AIDS.