SOURCE: Reuters, September 15, 2004
See Original Article Source

By Gershwin Wanneburg

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's leading AIDS treatment lobby is taking the government to court, accusing the authorities of falling behind their own targets to give drugs to people with HIV, the group's lawyer said on Wednesday.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) earned international plaudits for demanding life-saving anti-retrovirals for people with HIV -- a move the government announced last November to the country with the world's highest HIV/AIDS caseload: close to 5 million people infected according to most estimates.

"Indications are that we're already two years behind our patient targets," TAC lawyer Fatima Hassan said in an interview.

Hassan told Reuters the group had launched a court action demanding the release of government targets after the health department had ignored several informal requests.

Last November's target of treating 53,000 patients by March this year has already been revised twice, with Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang saying it is now likely to be reached only next year.

"If we're only on 8,000 (patients) by now, it's going to be very difficult to reach the initial targets," Hassan said.

Led by charismatic HIV sufferer Zackie Achmat, who long refused to take anti-retrovirals as a protest to back the TAC's demands for treatment for all, the group has consistently accused the government of moving too slowly.

The TAC says AIDS kills at least 600 South Africans every day.

Last year, faced with growing pressure at home and abroad, the government dropped its resistance to anti-retroviral drugs -- after initially dismissing them as toxic and too expensive -- and said it would provide them in public hospitals.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Hassan said giving non-governmental organizations access to government targets would help determine where treatment programs were failing and where such groups might be able to help.

It would also enable them to hold authorities accountable.

"We think it's important for all government departments to operate in a very open and transparent manner," Hassan said. "The successful implementation of the (AIDS) plan depends on information being made available to the public."

Health officials could not be reached for immediate comment.

In the past they have blamed drug shortages and a chronically weak health infrastructure for hampering one of the largest AIDS treatment roll-outs ever undertaken.

The United Nations estimates some 4.8 million South Africans are HIV-positive and 400,000 of them in need of treatment.

A coalition of AIDS groups, including the TAC and Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), issued a statement on Monday criticizing the government's handling of AIDS.

They denounced severe health staff shortages and the failure to award drug tenders, meaning that many people -- especially in poor rural areas -- died before they could receive treatment.

Back to PhotoEssay