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
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ALP and TAC condemn attacks on Heywood by Mseleku and Mametja

4 July, 2008 - 17:54 — moderator

The AIDS Law Project (ALP) and Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) condemn the attacks on Mark Heywood by the Department of Health Director General, Thami Mseleku and the national DOH TB cluster manager, David Mametja.

Mseleku, speaking from the floor after a plenary presentation by Heywood, made a personal attack on the presentation, claiming that Heywood had merely swapped his slides from HIV to TB, and that ‘human rights were not relevant to considerations of health policy in a developmental state’.

Mametja, in the closing session of the conference abused his position as co-chair of the conference track on Patient and Civil Society. Instead of reporting on the outcomes of that track he focused solely on attacking Heywood’s presentation of the day before. This was contemptuous of all the people who presented and participated in the track that he co-chaired.

The ALP and the TAC stand fully behind the call for partnership with government. However, we also stand by statements that South Africa’s TB programme has and is failing because of a lack of human and financial resources, as well as the lack of consistent and clear political leadership. We believe that, as with HIV, the plan is undermined by the overwhelming lack of faith in the Minister of Health, and the paralysis of her Ministry. It is time that she was replaced.

In conclusion, the ALP accepts Mametja’s offer to Heywood to join the Department of Health on an inspection of MDR sites in KwaZulu-Natal on Monday, 7 July. However, we call for this process:

  • to be extended to all MDR TB hospitals in the country,
  • to be linked to a commitment to rapidly finalise a clear national policy on MDR/XDR TB isolation
  • to immediately rectify all deficiencies identified at the sites, and
  • to finalise regulations that allow for isolation of drug resistant TB patients based on principles of justice and fairness.

 

Comments

7 July, 2008 - 15:53 — Anonymous

Thami and Manto are the biggest HIV&TB denialists

Thami and Manto are useless people in the health department and president Mbeki's strategy of deployment is poor.Instead of deploying Manto and Thami in the department of defence force because they are heartless he deployed them in the department of Health that needs humble,strategic,respectful,merciful,graceful cadres like Nosizwe.But what i liked about them is that, they exposed themselves to the nation that they don't deserve to live with human beings but with wild animals because they have changed the department to department of death and wealth shares.So let us pray that lives of the poor TB&HIV patiens remain stable until 2009 because they will be kissing the department
goodbye.

Charles Maponya (Limpopo)

7 July, 2008 - 16:54 — Anonymous

Its True

Mr Maponya its true but you forgot to involve he huge denialist of them all (Thabo Mbeki).

5 July, 2008 - 10:43 — Gregg Gonsalves

Thami Mseleku's Comments are Dangerous

Director General of Health Thami Mseleku's comments that: ‘human rights [are] not relevant to considerations of health policy in a developmental state’ are dangerous and uninformed.  Human rights and the rule of law are crucial in all aspects of governance, including health, in any state-developmental or otherwise.  What is tragic about Mseleku's comments is that it is clear now that in addition to being incompetent, obstructionist and ineffective, the leadership of the South African Department of Health has renounced its Constitutional obligations to protect the rights of all South Africans and those others who live within the country's borders.  The fact that the Presidency continues to protect the Minister of Health and the Director-General and the fact that the ANC as a party refuses to speak out on the ongoing abuses by DoH officials shows that they care little for ordinary South Africans and that they see their assumption and retention of power as a goal in and of itself, with no need for accountability to the people, responsibility for failures in service delivery. or for concern for the health of the nation.