Security officials seize AIDS council’s computers
Free State AIDS Council employee Sello Mohalipi has also been forced to leave Bloemfontein after receiving deaths threats following the release of a report by the civil society Stop the Stockouts coalition, said Heywood while addressing media at the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA).
The report found that 54 percent of Free State health facilities had experienced shortages of antiretroviral (ARV) medicine.
Heywood said his organisation was still investigating who was behind this week’s raid on the AIDS council. Those who carried off the computers allegedly identified themselves as both the Hawks and security from the Health MEC’s office.
“They said they wanted to find out who is behind the leaks about problems in the health system,” Heywood told Health-e. “While we have a good relationship with national health officials trying to address medicine stock outs, there is fierce intolerance of independent organisations in some provinces.”
Heywood said the raid had been reported to Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe via the South African National AIDS Council.
Meanwhile, African civil society organisations used International Human Rights Day to invoke the spirit of Nelson Mandela and demonstrate against the lack of human rights in many African countries.
Marching and picketing in and around the Cape Town International Convention Centre, an alliance of African organisations demanded that the continent ensure equal access to health care. They also asked for the repeal of laws that criminalise both sex work and same-sex relationships.
“Thirteen million people across Africa still don’t have access to the life-saving HIV medicines they need,” march organisers said in a statement. “Medicines stock-outs, corruption, mismanagement and a lack of political will to deal with these problems are undermining our struggle against HIV.”
Protestors demand fair patent laws as international trade negotiations near end
Activists also demanded that African countries reform their patent laws to guarantee access to affordable quality medicines, including newer ARVs available in wealthy countries. Protesters also criticised ongoing international trade talks that they said threaten the ability of Asian countries to produce generic medicines.
Countries like Australia, the United States and Malaysia are currently in the final negotiations regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement to govern trade relationships between 12 countries. Health organisations such as the Medicines Sans Frontiers have accused US negotiators of pushing for stringent intellectual property protection that would negatively impact Asian countries ability to manufacture generic medicines.
The organisations reminded the conference of Nelson Mandela’s speech to the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok in 2004 when he said: “We share a common humanity with our brothers and sisters suffering in this epidemic. Ask yourself what you can do as global citizens against the fight against HIV. We must never forget our own responsibilities.”
“In life Mandela worked tirelessly for the rights of all,” said Treatment Action Campaign Provincial Secretary in Gauteng Andrew Mosane. “If he were still with us, I am sure he would be urging us to work tirelessly to secure the rights of people living with HIV.”
“That is how we celebrate his legacy,” he added. – Health-e News Service.
Read more Health-e coverage of ICASA 2013
Author
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.
Security officials seize AIDS council’s computers
by kerrycullinan, Health-e News
December 11, 2013