Manto back in court
13/09/2004 16:12  - (SA)  

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Cape Town - The department of health is being taken to court again, this time by an Aids pressure group demanding it release its detailed antiretroviral rollout programme.

The application, brought by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), would be heard in the Pretoria High Court on November 2, Aids Law Project attorney Fatima Hassan said on Monday .

Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang had already filed notice of her intention to oppose it.

Hassan said the document - the so-called "annexure A" - was supposed to have been attached to the department's operational plan for its national ARV rollout released in November last year.

It contained "vital" information about patient targets and timetables, and when government planned to achieve particular objectives in particular provinces.

This information was important for people with HIV/Aids, she said.

Previously, TAC went to court to force the department to expand an ARV campaign to prevent mother to child transmission at birth.

Waiting lists running into 2005

Hassan was speaking at the release of a report on the launch in Limpopo earlier this month of a civil society forum to monitor and evaluate the ARV rollout.

The report said that while some provinces - notably Gauteng and the Western Cape - were doing well, there appeared to be major blockages in others.

"It was reported that at one treatment site in KwaZulu-Natal, waiting lists are running into August 2005," the report said.

Hassan explained that people who were screened for the programmes were told to come back in a year for their drugs, and there were also waiting lists for screening itself.

"That calls on civil society organisations such as ours to ask the right questions," she said.

She said about 8 000 people were currently receiving treatment, way off the department's target of 53 000 by March next year.

Nhlanhla Ndlovu, of Idasa's Aids budget unit, said it was a major concern that the provinces' spending of Aids money in their conditional grants from central government was substantially lower in the first quarter of this year than the first quarters of 2002 and 2003.

Last year the provinces spent 15% of their allocation in the first quarter, compared with 6.5% this year.

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