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.

Tuberculosis

Study shows mortality rate halved by early initiation of ARVs for people living with HIV and TB

The combination of antiretroviral (ARV) and tuberculosis (TB) treatments could more than halve the mortality rate among patients coinfected with HIV and TB, according to a randomised open-label trial by the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA). 

 

AIDS and Human Rights Groups Call on Botswana Government to Grant Access to Treatment for MDR TB Patient in Prison

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.

Letter from international health and human rights experts to Mbeki and Zuma on the need for a human rights approach to TB

TB photo

The group of eminent health and human rights experts write, "On the 3rd of July at the South African National Tuberculosis (TB) Conference in Durban, Mr. Thami Mseleku, Director General of the Department of Health, stated publicly that: “human rights are not relevant to the considerations of health policy in a developmental state”. As international health and human rights experts, we are extremely disturbed that someone holding such a central post with responsibility for health in South Africa would express such sentiment and display such a fundamental misunderstanding about human rights as a critical foundation of the health response in developing countries."

AIDS and human rights groups call on mining industry and SA government to address high rates of TB, HIV and other lung diseases

The AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA) issued a report today on tuberculosis (TB), the mining industry and migrant workers in the region, which raises urgent concerns about the failure of the South African government and mining companies to adequately address the health crisis among migrant workers in the South African mining sector.

The Mining Sector, Tuberculosis and Migrant Labour in South Africa

Policy and Programmatic Interventions for the Cross-Border Control of Tuberculosis between Lesotho and South Africa, Focusing on Miners, Ex-Miners and Their Families -A Policy Paper by the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA)

The Mining Sector, Tuberculosis and Migrant Labour in Southern Africa

THE MINING SECTOR, TUBERCULOSIS AND MIGRANT LABOUR IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

Policy and Programmatic Interventions for the Cross-Border Control of Tuberculosis between Lesotho and South Africa, Focusing on Miners, Ex-Miners and Their Families

- a policy paper by the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA)

ALP and TAC condemn attacks on Heywood by Mseleku and Mametja

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’.

Preventing, Diagnosing and Treating TB: A human rights approach

TAC has released two key position papers on TB.

"How does a preventable, curable disease become the leading cause of all natural deaths in SA, and the leading cause of all AIDS-related mortalities on our continent? Well, first we take drug-sensitive TB, a perfectly curable form of tuberculosis, and mismanage it for decades in health structures with poor infection control, weak diagnostic capacity, insufficient education on TB, inadequate resources and minimal political commitment. We observe substandard cure rates and increasing mortality figures. Over time, our poorly functioning TB programmes are manufacturing drug-resistant TB strains — the result of inadequate or incomplete TB treatment — but we don't worry about this too much until multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB explodes in our faces." -- Paula Akugizibwe, AIDS & Rights Alliance for Southern Africa

Open letter and call to action on TB/HIV to governments of the world signed by 204 civil society organizations

 

Open Letter to the Governments of the World:

 

UCT students work with TAC on TB/HIV integration

Six UCT medical students have conducted a research project with TAC. Together with TAC members, they surveyed patients at two health facilities in Cape Town on their perceptions and knowledge of TB and HIV service integration.
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