Khayelitsha trials set to continue


Top government health officials seem poised to let the Dr Rath Health Foundation off the hook for conducting illegal clinical trials on people with HIV in Khayelitsha.
Health director general Thami Mseleku told Health-e that a preliminary report submitted to his office by the health department’s Law Enforcement Directorate had not ‘found anything wrong with what is happening there (in Khayelitsha)’.
Health-e investigations have revealed that at least two HIV-positive women in Khayelitsha died within weeks of being convinced to discard their medication in favour of vitamins touted as an AIDS cure by the Dr Rath Health Foundation Others say they were told to strip to their underwear, photographed and had blood taken without giving consent. Others have been advised to stop taking their antiretrovirals and rather take the Rath Foundation products.
Mseleku said it was now up to the Medicines Control Council (MCC), which he said was an independent body, to investigate the matter further.
However, the health department’s director of nutrition, Lynne Moeng, broke ranks and criticised the inadequate labelling on Vita Cell, one of the Rath Foundation products, as well as the high dosages being prescribed.
She said the label had failed to indicate the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA), the dosage a consumer can safely use without adverse effects, as well as the recommended dosage for different ages.
‘’¦for the public, it (the label) actually means nothing,’ she said.
Moeng said taking high doses of vitamins would among others cause nausea and vomiting and impair liver function.
‘And for a person who is already immuno compromised (HIV positive) that would immediately deteriorate one’s condition,’ said Moeng.
She pointed out that a recent World Health Organisation Consultation meeting on Nutrition and HIV/AIDS in Africa, in which South Africa participated, adopted a policy statement that advised against the use of excessive levels of vitamins.
Moeng added that any ‘healing’ claims should be scientifically proven. ‘And if it has health claims then that’s a medicine. It immediately makes it a medicine and it should be registered and there should be studies which prove that this has worked for this, that and that,’ she said.
Moeng said that there were regulations stipulating that a high dose vitamin should be registered with the MCC
However, Mseleku differed: ‘’¦a complementary product does not have to go through all those processes’.
Meanwhile, Rath has started a political party, Allianz fur Gesundheit, Frieden und Soziale Gerechtigkeit (alliance for health, peace and social justice), and is campaigning in the German general elections to be held next month.
Rath has been flying ‘patients’ from Khayelitsha to his election rallies in Germany where they have been addressing supporters.
He claims on the party website that, together with his “allies”, the traditional healers and the South African government, they are fighting for the effective and inexpensive treatment of patients with natural products.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is preparing to face the health minister and MCC in court after both failed to act against Rath and his foundation.
‘We have received no response from the health minister or MCC despite our two week deadline being exceeded,’ said TAC spokesperson Nathan Geffen.
‘We will file as soon as papers are ready unless the health minister and MCC act before then,’ said Geffen.
The Dr Rath Health Foundation, led by Rath, claims that its vitamin products can reverse the course of AIDS and says on its website that it is conducting a ‘clinical trial’ in the township.
Rath has since pronounced that ‘The end of the Aids epidemic is now possible ‘ Millions of lives can be saved now ‘ naturally’.
However, the Foundation does not have the approval of the MCC to conduct a trial, has not registered its products with the MCC and makes unsubstantiated claims about their healing powers — all in violation of the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act.
MCC registrar Dr Humphrey Zokufa declined to comment on the MCC’s ‘investigation’ into the Rath Foundation’s activities, failing to answer a list of questions he had initially agreed to answer.
Zokufa claimed that the health department’s Law Enforcement Directorate had started the investigation in April this year and that it was not yet complete. The MCC was informed of the Rath Foundation’s activities in February.
The health department has also failed to comment on claims in Rath’s community newspaper ‘You Can’ that ‘the Dr Rath Health Foundation Africa has the support of our Minister of Health and our Government’.
The newspaper is being distributing in the townships across the Western Cape.
Author
-
Health-e News is South Africa's dedicated health news service and home to OurHealth citizen journalism. Follow us on Twitter @HealtheNews
View all posts
Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Khayelitsha trials set to continue
by Health-e News, Health-e News
September 15, 2005
MOST READ
US funding freeze disrupts HIV, TB, and GBV support services
Healthcare coalition says NHI is “unfeasible”, proposes alternative route to universal health coverage
Kindness costs: The hidden sacrifices nurses make for patients with TB
EDITOR'S PICKS
Related

Stories From The Ground: Teen mum juggling school and a baby set to write matric finals

Stories from the ground: A mother’s journey towards beating breast cancer

Stories from the ground: EC nurse fears for her life as clinics come under siege from criminals

Stories From The Ground: Teen mum juggling school and a baby set to write matric finals

Stories from the ground: A mother’s journey towards beating breast cancer
