This is an archive of the Treatment Action Campaign's public documents from December 1998 until October 2008. I created this website because the TAC's website appears unmaintained and people were concerned that it
was becoming increasingly hard to find important documents.

The menu items have been slightly edited and a new stylesheet applied to the site. But none of the documents have been edited, not even for minor errors. The text appears on this site as obtained from the Internet Archive.

The period covered by the archive encompassed the campaign for HIV medicines, the civil disobedience campaigns, the Competition Commission complaints, the 2008 xenophobic violence and the PMTCT, Khayelitsha health workers and Matthias Rath court cases.

Misleading Department of Health Statement

Media Statement

24 November 2004

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has decided to withdraw its legal action

demanding that the Department of Health provide certain annexures to the

Comprehensive Plan for Management, Care and Treatment of HIV and AIDS.

However, the TAC is demanding that the Department pays its legal costs.

The TAC decision not to proceed with its legal action comes after the

Department filed its answering affidavit opposing the application to have

access to certain annexures to the Comprehensive Plan. Despite reference

to the annexures in the Plan, they were never written by the Department or

included in the Plan.

Acting on behalf of the TAC, the AIDS Law Project's Fatima Hassan wrote a

letter to the state attorney stating that they have advised their clients

not to pursue this matter any further.

"We accept that our client is not entitled to annexes A.1 and A.2 and will

no longer be persisting in our client's claim for an order directing

disclosure of these documents," said Hassan.

"Based on what is contained in the answering affidavit deposed to by Dr

Chetty (Acting Director General of the Department of Health), we have

advised our client to accept in good faith that annexes A.1 and A.2 are

not the final, approved and/or adopted 'week by week schedule for the

pre-implementation period' and the 'Detailed Implementation Plan'

respectively, but are draft documents that were not approved by the

Department, Minmec and/or Cabinet."

The Department welcomes the decision of the TAC to abandon this matter.

However, it is unfortunate that much effort and resources had to be put

into legal processes before the matter could be resolved.

Issued by Department of Health

Contact

Sibani Mngadi

0827720161

[END OF MISLEADING DOH STATEMENT]