Govt to probe police firing on AIDS activists

The Eastern Cape government is to investigate an incident where at least 40 people, protesting against the province's slow rollout of anti-AIDS drugs, were injured after police allegedly opened fire on them with rubber bullets and teargas.

Sizwe Kupelo, a spokesman for the provincial government's health department, said the authorities stood by their decision to call in the police. The Eastern Cape Minister of Health, Dr Bevan Goqwana, had called for an inquiry into the incident.

The AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which organised the protest, has claimed that the South African Police Services in the Eastern Cape town of Queenstown "brutally assaulted and then opened fire on unarmed, peaceful protesters asking for HIV treatment".

Of the 40 people injured, at least 10 were living openly with HIV/AIDS.

"The authorities had been pleading with protestors for three hours to vacate the hospital premises [Frontier Hospital in Queenstown] after they had submitted their memorandum, but they refused to oblige and had become a threat to the patients. The authorities had no choice but to call the police," said Kupelo.

The joint UN programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, said declaring police action during a protest by people living with HIV was "unacceptable", and warned that violence against protesters could threaten efforts to respond to AIDS.

"UNAIDS has long supported and will continue to support the freedom of assembly and association of people living with AIDS," the organisation said in a statement issued in Geneva.

"It is imperative for people living with HIV to be able to openly share information about the disease, to learn about options for treatment and to advocate for better care, including access to life-saving treatment," it added.

Sipho Mthathi, a spokeswoman for the TAC, said the activists were protesting against the Frontier hospital's lack of urgency in implementing the antiretroviral (ARV) rollout. "They were justifying the delay with explanations like: they did not have a social welfare officer to assess the needs of the patients, which is not acceptable," she commented.

The hospital has only 200 people on treatment, as against the 2,000 in need of it, according to the TAC. Fewer than 10 people have been put on treatment this year.

According to Mthathi, the Eastern Cape and the provinces of Mpumalanga and Limpopo had the worst records in rolling out ARV treatment. Less than 2,000 people in each province were receiving state-sponsored ARV medication.

The TAC said only about 45,000 people were receiving ARV treatment at public facilities - below the government's target of 53,000 by March 2005. "We want at least 200,000 people on treatment by 2006," noted Mthathi.

Gauteng province was treating 13,000 people, while 8,000 were on ARVs in the Western Cape, so these provinces were "doing relatively well in terms of providing ARV treatment," she noted.

In a recent article in a local newspaper the national Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, claimed that the government's rollout programme was "on track" and, in terms of the government's plan, "... we had to have at least one service point in every district by March this year and thereafter extend services to all 231 local municipalities. By last month 143 facilities were providing [ARV] treatment across South Africa".

According to the World Health Organisation target of providing treatment to 3 million HIV-positive people globally by the end of 2005 under the '3 by 5' initiative, South Africa has the highest number of people needing treatment - more than 800,000 - followed by India with 735,000 and Nigeria with 598,000.