13 December 2002 Dear Subscribers In this email: * A message of thanks at the end of the year from the TAC secretariat * A short SAPA report on Nelson Mandela's visit to the Site C HIV clinic in Khayelitsha yesterday. ************* Dear Friends and Comrades THANKS TO TAC STAFF, VOLUNTEERS, ALLIES AND EXECUTIVE The year is ending. During 2002 our staff members, volunteers, allies (locally and internationally), as well as the provincial and national executive members of the Treatment Action Campaign have worked day and night to prevent new infections and to support those who are ill and dying. We work to give hope to everyone with HIV/AIDS that our government will commit to and implement a national treatment plan. Sometimes we have faltered, other times we lacked courage, we have also cried and made mistakes. Of all the years since the first person with HIV/AIDS died in South Africa, 2002 has been a year in which we have experienced both the deepest despair and enormous hope. In the first part of the year HIV/AIDS denialism in our government grew stronger than ever with a campaign led by the late Peter Mokaba. All of us thought that rationality was lost. However, the Constitutional Court case, local and international solidarity, courageous people in the ANC and government prompted the Cabinet Statement of 17th April 2002. Thereafter mobilisation of thousands of activists and ordinary people across our country continued for the court hearing on 2 May 2002. Victory for TAC, the Children's Rights Centre, Dr Haroon Saloojee and other health professionals followed in the Constitutional Court. Throughout the year TAC activists were bolstered by unwavering support of the faith communities through the SACC, Positive Muslims, the SA Catholic Bishops Conference, Anglican Church, Haboni! m and individual leaders of the Jewish and Hindu faiths. As we said at the beginning of the year TAC continued to work and mobilize for a national treatment plan. Cosatu showed its commitment in co-hosting the National Treatment Congress at the end of June 2002 and then provided critical leadership in negotiations at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) between government, business, labour and the community for a national treatment plan. Almost on a daily basis TAC staff, volunteers and supporters in Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Western Cape Provinces conducted treatment literacy workshops, distributed condoms, cleaned clinics, helped distribute fluconazole and tried their best to help individuals with access to health care and medicines . Internationally TAC continued to mobilize. In August 2002, together with our comrades across the African continent, we helped form the Pan-African Treatment Access Movement. We spoke to meetings in Asia, Europe, North America and at the United Nations. Our work continued to be supported morally and materially by Bread for the World, MSF, Atlantic Philanthropies, and the Southern African Development Fund. Allies such as the Student Global AIDS Campaign, HealthGap Coalition, Gay Men's Health Crisis and others (too many to mention) continue to reflect a global conscience and urgency that is lacking in government and business. The scientific community and health workers have given us enormous moral confidence as we worked together. In November the Nelson Mandela Foundation, MSF and Cosatu again showed leadership by working with us to bring community ARV programmes, nurses, doctors, scientists and a few government officials together to prepare practically to save lives. Every day, the work we do reveals pain, illness, premature death and tragedy. It also shows an immense urgency, humanity and compassion in every community, workplace, school, faith-based community and home. The campaign for HIV treatment and prevention is rebuilding local and global solidarity among ordinary citizens. But, we wait for our government and the rulers of Europe and North America to show the same urgency and the same concern for life. We remember comrades across the country, the continent and the world; those who died of HIV/AIDS related illnesses this year, the families and friends they left behind, and, the children they will never see. Brave young women such as Sarah Hlalele, who died in April, remain in our thoughts. We remember the parents who watched their children get ill, die and then bury them. Instead of pride in children who have become parents, they mourn with their grandchildren for families lost. We think of all our friends, comrades, families, colleagues and strangers who are infected and those who are ill. We cry with those who have become infected with HIV. We promote safer sex for all and say respect and protect your body and the body of your partner. Respect the choice of women and men who want to delay sex. We know that our fear and pain can be healed and our health restored. But this requires respect for the rights to life, dignity and equality. As the year ends our hearts are filled with trepidation. Will our government commit to a treatment and prevention plan that will assist in saving 3 million lives over the next ten years? Will the government and business sign the Framework Agreement for a National Prevention and Treatment Plan at NEDLAC sooner rather than later? Every day hundreds of people die because of the unnecessary delays. Or, will an irrational minority in government succeed in stalling antiretroviral treatment, turning promises into stone and answering the call for medicines from the ill and dying with cynical political slogans? Two prospects open up. First, the meeting between TAC and the Deputy President, as well as the NEDLAC negotiations, created a possibility of rebuilding trust through the implementation of a treatment plan. This has been assisted by budgetary commitments made in Parliament and the setting up of a joint committee of the finance and health departments to cost the provision of anti-retroviral treatment. Should the government follow this route and provide anti-retrovirals in the public sector, every thinking person and organization in our country will put a shoulder to the wheel. We can save lives, restore dignity and promote social development. Or, the government can stall. It can watch people die. We won't. Government delays and denial will cause enormous conflict as TAC activists, nurses, doctors, scientists, religious leaders, women, youth, business people unite in a campaign of civil disobedience to change government policy and to save lives. Failure to implement a treatment and prevention plan that includes antiretroviral therapy will bring shame on the worldwide respect gained by the ANC as a liberation movement. We can only hope that wise counsel will prevail and that government will respect the rights to life, dignity and equality of all. TAC staff, volunteers, allies (local and international) will work with government to save lives. On behalf of the TAC National Executive, we thank every person and organization who has supported HIV prevention efforts, reaching out to orphans and children in need, and, those who have worked to win HIV treatment and a quality health care service for all. Foremost, among all we thank our staff and volunteers. Forward to a healthy and productive 2003. Zackie Achmat Mark Heywood Tsakane Mangwane Theo Steele TAC Chairperson TAC Secretary TAC Secretariat TAC Secretariat ********** Govt 'coming round' on ARVs Related Articles Aids: 'White youth ignorant' HSRC estimates 'far too low' Mandela: Aids war can be won SA's Aids seen in new light Cape Town - The government was "coming round" on the issue of providing antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to people with HIV/Aids, former president Nelson Mandela said on Thursday. His upbeat assessment, during a visit to a pioneering treatment facility in Cape Town, coincided however with activists' claims that the government is stalling on a national ARV agreement. Mandela, wearing a Treatment Action Campaign "HIV-positive" T-shirt, said he was in discussions with President Thabo Mbeki on the issue of ARVs. "Apart from the question of lack of funding, because it is very expensive, they are coming round," he said. "They are going to do something to show the government cares. We are talking to them. I must say that Thabo Mbeki is a person who loves his people." TAC Mandela threw his full weight behind the TAC's campaign for a public sector Aids treatment plan after a meeting earlier this year with TAC head Zackie Achmat, who is refusing to take ARVs until the government begins a pilot project. The government has mandated the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) to come up with an agreement on the provision of free ARV's, but the TAC this week accused government negotiators of "ducking and diving". The TAC had hoped the agreement would be signed by December 6. Khayelitsha clinic The treatment facility Mandela visited on Thursday was at the Nolungile Community Health Centre in Khayelitsha's poverty-ridden Site C. The Aids clinic there was started in May last year as a partnership between international humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Western Cape government. Nolungile and two other sites in Khayelitsha were the first in South Africa to provide ARVs in public primary health care services. 'Lots of Money' Addressing patients, Aids activists and staff after a tour of the facility, Mandela said he intended to talk to people to see what he could do to assist it financially. His Nelson Mandela Foundation was already working with Achmat and others, "but I'm going to start something separate to make sure you have lots of money". According to MSF, only one in every thousand people who need ARVs in South Africa are getting the drugs, half of them through the Khayelitsha Aids clinics. It says 300 people are currently receiving generic ARVs, imported from Brazil, at the three centres. One of them, 25-year-old Kholiswa Ramncwana, showed Mandela her medication, with tablets marked for each day of the week. "I told him I want all people to have these anti-retrovirals free of charge so they can live a long time," she said afterwards. "A lot of people are dying and these drugs are too expensive ... he (Mandela) said he will try everybody to get this." MSF MSF also announced on Thursday that Mandela would join forces with it to create a new Aids treatment project near Umtata in the Transkei. MSF head in South Africa Dr Eric Goemaere said the time to scale up Aids projects was long overdue and this would only be possible with political action at national and international level. "With the Nelson Mandela Foundation, we hope to create another project in South Africa that prolongs people's lives, and serves as a roadmap for scaling up treatment here and in other countries," he said. [ENDS] *****************