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.

Home › Treatment in South Africa

Medicine Prices

People in South Africa obtain medicines either through the public health system or from private dispensing doctors and pharmacies. Patients receive medicines for free from the public health system, but have to put up with extraordinarily long queues and inconsistent service. Private sector patients are usually insured by a medical scheme to which they pay a monthly premium.

Pharmaceutical companies sell medicines at a single exit price to the private sector. The state buys medicines for the public sector, usually but not always via a tender process.