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South Africa: Aids Lobby Pushes for Antiretrovirals for Migrants
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
20 May 2008
Posted to the web 20 May 2008
Wilson Johwa
Johannesburg
BUOYED by its victory against the military's HIV-testing policies, the AIDS Law Project (ALP) is pressing the government into providing antiretroviral therapy to migrants.
Last week, the ALP scored a major victory when, after 13 years of fighting the military's HIV-testing policy, the Pretoria High Court declared the policy unconstitutional. The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has six months to come up with a new policy.
ALP executive director Mark Heywood said while government policy required that even undocumented migrants received medical attention at public hospitals, there was no budget, resulting in excessive pressure on service. As a result, some hospitals simply refused to attend to foreigners.
This comes at a time of violent attacks on foreign African nationals in Gauteng.
While there was not yet an intention to pursue legal action, the ALP wanted to ensure that the health department fully implemented its directive. "There will be a continuing strain on our health system because of our failure to deal with people from Zimbabwe," Fatima Hassan, also with the ALP, said.
However, Heywood said migrants' access to healthcare was not the only matter the ALP was looking into. One other was the "TB crisis and the insufficiency of the national TB plan". SA was battling with an outbreak of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) to which people with AIDS easily fell prey.
Last December, there were reports of 49 infectious patients with MDR-TB escaping from the isolation unit of an Eastern Cape hospital . Apparently, the patients wanted to spend Christmas with their families.
Local data showed that about 6% of 17615 MDR-TB specimens collected between 2004 and last October were extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). In KwaZulu-Natal 14% of 4701 MDR-TB cases recorded were XDR-TB.
Heywood said although legal action was never the first course of action, the ALP had no qualms about going to court, especially in matters of great urgency where there was no time for protracted negotiations with the government. "TB is, in our view, one of the most urgent issues at the moment."
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Another outstanding issue is prisoners' access to treatment, even though the ALP won a court challenge two years ago. But after more than a year of negotiating with the government, "the prisoners at Westville still complain about what is happening to them," Heywood said.
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