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The South African AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is baying for blood after the recent AIDS-related death of an inmate at Westville Prison in the port city of Durban.
TAC chairperson Zackie Achmat told the South African Press Association that the deceased's health had declined rapidly since March this year, while government officials dragged their feet on the best way to administer anti-AIDS drugs at correctional facilities.
The inmate was one of 15 prisoners involved in a drawn-out court battle with the health department over access to the life-prolonging drugs.
Calling for murder charges to be brought against the Minister of Correctional Services, Ngconde Balfour, and the Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Achmat said: "This man is dead because of them.
In 1996 he entered the prison a healthy man, now he is dead."
The government unveiled its first accredited prison-based AIDS treatment site at Grootvlei Prison in Free State Province earlier this year, but inmates at the country's other 240 facilities are still taken under strict security to local hospitals for treatment.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions