South African AIDS Lobby Group Takes Government to Court

Today in Johannesburg, the AIDS activist group Treatment Action Coalition asked the Pretoria High Court to force the government to pay the cost of TAC's latest legal effort to speed the rollout of free antiretrovirals.

In November 2003, President Thabo Mbeki's cabinet announced it would begin providing the drugs to AIDS patients. The rollout was apparently to proceed according to timelines set out in a document. TAC demanded that this document be made public. After its several requests to the health ministry were rebuked, TAC turned in June to the courts, invoking the Public Access to Information Act.

But in September, the government said the document, called "Annexure A," was only a draft that the cabinet had never officially adopted -- meaning TAC's case could not proceed.

"This was very surprising to the TAC because since February 2004 we were led to believe that the implementation plan was Annexure A," TAC said in a statement. "We will ask the Pretoria High Court to award us all the legal costs for taking this case so far because it took government so long to inform us that Annexure A was a draft." Mark Heywood, TAC spokesperson, said, "We are making the political point that the government could have told us. Every delay by government results in people dying before they get access to treatment."

The government had promised to have more than 50,000 HIV patients on treatment by March 2004. Yet by October, only about 15,000 people were receiving the free drugs. Health ministry spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said the ministry now hopes to treat 50,000 patients by March 2005.

Back to other news for November 4, 2004