New campaign for efficient AIDS drug rollout

South Africans have welcomed a comprehensive HIV/AIDS treatment plan approved by the cabinet in November and expected to be implemented in 2004. However, AIDS activists have said the rollout of antiretroviral drugs to people living with HIV/AIDS would only be efficient if there were better public health centres. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said one of its challenges in the coming year would be to campaign for "decent health centres", especially in rural communities, where existing facilities were dilapidated. TAC spokesman Mark Heywood was quoted by the South African Press Association as saying: "We are going to launch the People's Health Service Campaign to mobilise trade unions and South Africans at large to put pressure on government and the private health sector on this issue."