Treatment Action Campaign

Yanga Janet was released on bail for R500 last week. The case will be heard today (2 September 2008) outside the Khayelitsha Regional Court. TAC will be picketing outside the court to demand that justice is served.

In Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille's recent address to the full City Council (27 August 2008) she states that it is disingenuous for the TAC to withdraw its case in the High Court (demanding norms and standards from government for the sites housing displaced persons) on the basis that these have subsequently been provided because the TAC "was party to the formulation of these standards from the word go, and knew they were coming".

The AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA), the Treatment Action Campaign, the AIDS Law Project, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and the HIV Collaborative Fund call on the Government of Botswana to urgently grant access to treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) patient Mthandazo Sibanda, who is being held in a maximum-security prison clinic in Gaborone pending his deportation to Zimbabwe. The grounds for deportation are his TB status and self-interruption of treatment in June, following months of mismanagement in the health care system.

Today is an important day for displaced people and a victory for Hirsi and TAC. At the end of July 2008, the Treatment Action Campaign, the AIDS Law Project and Mahammud Hirsi took all tiers of government -with the Western Cape Provincial Government being the first respondent- to court after waiting for about 9 weeks to ensure that minimum norms and standards on sanitation, food and shelter amongst others would be implemented in places of shelter in accordance with our Constitution and the obligations we have under international law. For many weeks, TAC stepped in to provide humanitarian relief because our government – the province and the city- failed to fulfil their Constitutional obligations. After it became clear that government was not executing its duties, despite requesting many times for it to develop norms and standards and to implement it, we approached the Cape High Court for relief. The case was due to be argued on 1 September 2008. After we lodged our court papers, and while waiting for their response, today, we can announce that there is no longer a need to continue with the case as the provincial cabinet has approved a set of emergency guidelines – or norms and standards.

This is a presentation by Judge Edwin Cameron at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. He presents ten reasons why criminalisation of HIV transmission is a bad idea.

 

 

Pharmaceutical manufacturer Adcock Ingram has issued a recall of certain batches of Adco-Nevirapine and Adco-Zidovudine (what is commonly known as AZT) due to a packaging error. It was discovered by Adcock Ingram that blister packs of Adco-Nevirapine had been packed into nine packs of Adco-Zidovudine. The Nevirapine blister packs were labelled correctly but they had been inserted into AZT boxes.

As a precautionary measure Adcock Ingram is recalling entire batches of the affected anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). The recalled boxes are: Adco-Nevirapine batch number 1J, expiry date January 2009; and Adco-Zidovudine batch number 1Z, expiry date November 2008. All recalled drugs will be replaced by the correct medication.

Do you remember where you were 8 years ago? I remember it distinctly. In the summer of 2000, I was in Durban for the first -and so far only - international AIDS conference held on African soil. There are many unkind things said about these events, but those few days in South Africa changed the lives of millions of people forever. I still get shivers when I remember the challenge directed at us by Edwin Cameron, a justice of the South African Supreme Court of Appeal and an openly HIV-positive, gay man. He said: Those of us who live affluent lives, well-attended by medical care and treatment, should not ask how Germans or white South Africans could tolerate living in proximity to moral evil. We do so ourselves today, in proximity to the impending illness and death of many millions of people with AIDS.

The TAC is running out of funds to supply humanitarian relief to the approximately 5 000 displaced persons living in city and community halls and camps in the Western Cape. As of 30 July 2008 the TAC had spent R 2,744,891.50 on direct humanitarian assistance. The amount to date is now closer to R 2,900,000.00. The Joint Operation Centre (with both Provincial and City representatives) is still unable or unwilling to meet the basic needs of those displaced. This is especially concerning in the case of women and children and in particular those at smaller shelters which receive no government assistance. We have notified the JOC, Province and City that we will be unable to provide aid beyond Monday 11 August 2008. However, it appears that we will run short of funds even before this date. In addition we are concerned that urgent humanitarian intervention may need to be made in various instances after Monday 11 August.

TAC has launched a court action on behalf of people who have displaced by xenophobic violence. Papers for Hirsi and TAC v Provincial Government, City of Cape Town and Government of RSA were filed on Tuesday, 29 July 2008 in the High Court of South Africa, Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division. The court case seeks to address conditions in camps and safety sites housing displaced people in the Western Cape.

Govenment has stated that humanitarian aid will end on the 3rd September 2008. 5000 people remain displaced in consistently poor conditions.