Duration: 3minutes 34 seconds

Transcript

KHOPOTSO BODIBE: When Justice Edwin Cameron was diagnosed with HIV in 1986, he was only 33 years old. At that time, he says, he was afraid that he wouldn’€™t reach 40. He says he also knew for certain that he would never reach 50. Thanks to the anti-retrovirals that he has been taking for the last six years, he recently he celebrated his 50th birthday. For Cameron, the drugs are his life. But, he is painfully aware that many thousands of South Africans have neither medical aid nor the money to ensure access to the life prolonging drugs. That’€™s why he is so enthusiastic about government’€™s decision to apppoint a task team to investigate how best to introduce treatment in the public sector.                  

EDWIN CAMERON: That was a huge breakthrough, a very optimistic breakthrough. I believe that we have the capacity as a nation to do that. So, I feel very optimistic about that.

KB: Others are quite sceptical, saying this is not a real commitment from government that, yes, they will actually make anti-retrovirals available to all and sundry who should get treatment?

CAMERON: I believe in the Cabinet’€™s announcement. I believe it’€™s irreversible. I believe in the language of the statement. And I believe in our capacity to follow through on that language and our political commitment to do so. So, I think we all have every reason to put our beliefs and our commitments behind that statement and to make it a practical reality for those millions of South Africans who face the threat of illness and death from AIDS.    

KB: Even though he was privileged to afford anti-retrovirals when he first started treatment in 1997, and later when his medical aid scheme made provision for AIDS drugs, Cameron says he knows the pain most people go through who cannot afford the drugs.

CAMERON: In 1986 when I was diagnosed, AIDS was a death sentence because there was no medication available for it. And I therefore know, despite the difference in my specificities as a human ‘€“ the fact that I’€™m a white male, a professional gay man ‘€“ what it feels like for other people in very different conditions, very different defining human circumstances to feel that AIDS is a death sentence because for most people in Africa there aren’€™t drugs available. So, they have the same prospects as I had in 1986 when I thought I was gonna die within a few years.

KB: The national fight for AIDS treatment has been a long and tiring. Due to his role as Judge, Cameron is not allowed to engage in public protests such as the call for a national treatment programme. But he has had his own battle to fight in order to access the drugs at a reasonable rate.                

CAMERON: It was fantastically expensive. It took about a third of my disposable income as a High Court Judge. It was costing me, for a month of the protease inhibitor and the other two drugs, R4 200 in 1997 in money terms those days – fantastically expensive and unaffordable for 99.9 percent of Africans. And, in addition, my medical insurance ‘€“ the medical insurance that covers judges, and Members of Parliament – did not make provision for AIDS drugs at that stage. They had an unfair discriminatory cap of R800 a year for all AIDS treatments and I had to fight very hard to get that changed as well. Eventually, by writing some very distressed and angry letters, I managed to get that changed and now Polmed, the parliamentarians’€™ and judges’€™ medical scheme, like most medical schemes in South Africa, has a generous allowance for AIDS drugs.

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