CAPE TOWN – Deputy-president Jacob Zuma has met with the Treatment Action Campaign leadership, the second positive indication in less than a week that Government was grappling with providing anti-retrovirals in the public sector.

In a significant move, Zuma and director-general for health Dr Ayanda Ntsaluba met with the TAC representatives led by national chairperson Zackie Achmat and national secretary Mark Heywood at Tuynhuys on Tuesday night.

Relations between TAC and Government have been strained after a court battle earlier this year in which the Department of Health was ordered by the highest court to provide nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission.

In a joint statement today (October 16) both parties agreed that the NEDLAC process between labour, business, government and the community on a framework agreement for a national treatment plan was important.

TAC had given government until World AIDS Day on December 1 to come up with a national treatment plan, including antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV/AIDS. However, Zuma pointed out that this time frame might not be feasible and both parties agreed to consult further in this regard.

“However, TAC and the deputy president recognised the need for urgency based on the impact of the disease and the suffering and death in the  communities,” said Lakela Kaunda, spokesperson for Zuma.

The meeting between TAC and Zuma comes six days after Cabinet announced that it was actively engaged in addressing the challenges that would enable it to make use of anti-retrovirals in the public health sector.

The October 9 statement said that a task team from the Department of Health and National Treasury was working specifically around the cost implications of such a move.

Cabinet also committed itself to urgently investigate the experiences of HIV/AIDS treatment in the private health sector, including the costs, the impact, issues of resistance and compliance.

AIDS has become an embarrassment and politically, Government has no choice, according to Professor Helen Schneider of the Centre for Health Policy at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Schneider said that for the first time since the “MTCT events” there was a sense that Government was moving forward.

“HIV/AIDS had become part of the political fault lines (with Inkatha as well as the alliance partners) and was threatening the political credibility of Government also in the context of NEPAD,” said Schneider.

Schneider cautioned that some issues were still not entirely clear, but that there was a definite move to remove HIV as a factor within the political arena.

Zuma and the TAC group also discussed the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, the restructuring of the SA National AIDS Council and the rollout of the mother-to-child prevention programmes, particularly in terms of the Constitutional Court order.

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