JOINT PRESS RELEASE IN RESPONSE TO MISLEADING PRESS STATEMENTS BY POLITICAL 
PARTIES: 25 October 2000

The following organisations hereby release this joint press statement:

Lifeline
MSF (Doctors Without Borders)
Radio Zibonele
Rape Crisis
Treatment Action Campaign
Wola Nani

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Joint NGO Press Release on the Recent Mischaracterizations of AIDS-Related
Treatment in Khayelitsha

25 October 2000, Khayelitsha— Recent statements by major political parties have 
grossly misrepresented the pilot mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) programme 
in Khayelitsha.

We, as NGOs and community organisations active in Khayelitsha, wish to make 
several points about the programme.

First, the intervention here is not a clinical trial. The pilot project uses 
only one anti-retroviral drug – AZT – which has been conclusively proven safe 
and effective. AZT is used worldwide, and its safety and efficacy are one of 
the major reasons why mother-to-child transmission of HIV has been almost 
completely eliminated in Europe and the US. No experimental products are used in 
Khayelitsha, so comparisons to settings in which new drugs are tested on people 
such as the clinical trials in Atteridgeville are false and misleading.

Second, the pilot project does not belong to any political party. The programme 
was initiated by several prominent ANC politicians including Ebrahim Rasool and 
has been further developed under the DA. Both the ANC and the DA have recently 
affirmed the importance of the medical intervention piloted here: the DA 
announced that the model developed here will be expanded around the Western 
Cape, while the ANC Health of Minister, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, announced 
a national phased implementation of MTCT programmes two weeks ago.

This project belongs to the Khayelitsha community. In the first one and a half 
years of the programme, over 75% of the women attending ante-natal clinics in 
Khayelitsha decided to participate in the project (a figure much higher than 
that seen in similar programmes in Botswana or Zimbabwe). As a result, many 
infants have been spared HIV infection and many of the women are now encouraged 
to take care of their own health.

To suggest that the MTCT programme bears any resemblance to "the biological 
warfare of the Apartheid era" is a grotesque distortion of the truth. What is 
truly obscene are the efforts of all politicians to use the lives of people with 
HIV/AIDS as political pawns to score points with voters ahead of the upcoming 
local elections. We denounce these attempts, and call upon all political parties 
to instead unite in confronting the gravest threat now facing this country.

We invite any politician who has doubts about the community’s acceptance of this 
project to visit us (without expecting a photo opportunity) and to meet with the 
women who have passed through the programme. Access to interventions that can 
prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV is a right that all South Africans 
deserve.