Preventable, treatable and curable diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and thrush, for which there are often free or cheap drugs, are causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive people, the United States based Treatment Action Group (TAG) has revealed.Speaking at the Treatment Preparedness Summit recently held in Cape Town, TAG executive director Mark Harrington said that treatable and curable opportunistic infections were responsible for the deaths of most people infected with HIV/AIDS. Anso Thom reports.

Although South Africa has no '€œpolicy as such'€ to provide anti-retrovirals to people living with HIV/AIDS, it was relying on the private sector to advise it on the implications and complications of such a programme.Speaking at Parliament'€™s health committee meeting this week, Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, said her department needed to be clear about what it wanted to do.

Between six and nine million people in developing countries currently urgently need anti-retroviral treatment while in reality only between 230 000 and 300 000 have access to these drugs, according to a report by HealthGAP, a US-based human rights group.

CAPE TOWN - AIDS activists from around the world have been invited to join South Africans on April 27 and 28 in civil disobedience and protest campaigns should Government fail to implement a national treatment plan.Speaking at the opening of the International Treatment Preparedness Summit in Cape Town, Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Zackie Achmat called on delegates from 67 countries to picket outside South African embassies.