By Rick Westhead, Chiara Carter and Eleanor Momberg
South Africa's "salad stand" at the international HIV and Aids conference in Toronto, Canada, along with a damning indictment of the government by the United Nations envoy for Aids in Africa, have thrust South Africa's response to the pandemic back into the global spotlight.
Leading figures in the fight against HIV and Aids, headed by UN envoy Stephen Lewis, have lambasted the government's response to the crisis.
And locally, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is taking its battle with the government over the provision of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to the prisons, streets and courts this week and is demanding that President Thabo Mbeki explain why, in the face of the HIV and Aids crisis, he does not fire Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the health minister.
Continues Below ↓
The catalyst for the TAC going head to head with the government is the state's refusal to implement an interim high court order that the department of correctional services immediately supply ARVs to critically ill HIV-positive inmates at Durban's Westville Prison.
The government is appealing against the Durban high court's ruling, but the TAC is going back to the court on Wednesday to challenge, in turn, whether the government may ignore an interim order.
This follows the death earlier this month of one of 15 prisoners who, with the TAC, took the departments of correctional services and health to court on the issue.
Achmat said the TAC intended staging further protests this week: at the Cape Town magistrate's court on Tuesday, and countrywide on Thursday when the TAC intends calling on supporters and the public to demand that Mbeki fire his health minister or explain why he keeps her on.
"We need government to unambiguously state that people should take their medication and that while a healthy lifestyle is desirable it cannot be a substitute.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
