The AIDS Law Project (ALP) welcomes this opportunity to make written submissionson the Health Professions Amendment Bill [B 10 – 2006] (“the Bill”). As an organisation that has consistently sought to ensure that the Health Professions Council (“the Council”) holds health professionals to account, we welcome the Bill and the many positive contributions we believe it will make in advancing and safeguarding the public interest.
Since October 2005 the TAC and the AIDS Law Project (ALP) have assisted HIV positive inmates at Westville Prison in acquiring ARVs that have routinely been refused to them by prison authorities. Situated in Kwazulu Natal, one of the provinces most severely affected by HIV/AIDS, Westville had steadfastly prevented TAC or other NGOs from conducting treatment workshops, treatment literacy programs, or any form of HIV awareness training.
Government Notice 2007 of 2005 (Government Gazette No. 28214 of 11 November 2005) calls for submissions – amongst other things – on a methodology for conforming with international benchmarks of the prices of medicines. According to the notice, the methodology will be determined and published by the Minister of Health (“the Minister”) in terms of regulation 5(2)(e) of the Regulations Relating to a Transparent Pricing System for Medicines and Scheduled Substances (“the pricing regulations”).
The Department of Labour is commended for taking the initiative in compiling an Instruction to clarify various issues around compensation for occupationally acquired HIV.
We meet HIV positive prisoners.
In an advertisement placed in the Sunday Times (dated 23 October 2005 and entitled “Call for Submissions”), the Pricing Committee invited “interested parties to provide input on an appropriate dispensing fee as envisaged in terms of section 22G of the Medicines and Related Substances Act, Act No. 101 of 1965” (the Medicines Act). In particular, the advertisement called for interested parties to “provide input on all issues that are relevant to the determination of an appropriate dispensing fee.”
Democratising development: the politics of socio-economic rights in South Africa by Peris Jones and Kristian Stokke, Martinus Nijhoff publishers, 2005 Shaping, making and breaking the law in the campaign for a national HIV/AIDS treatment plan
The price of denial (2004) 5(3) Interfund Development Update 93.
The ALP and Treatment Action Campaign made a submission to the Jali Commission in March 2004 entitled “HIV/AIDS in Prison: Treatment, Intervention, and Reform” [NOTE: LINK TO EARLIER SUBMISSION]. The submission dealt with the origins and causes of HIV infection in prisons, HIV prevalence in prisons, the HIV/AIDS policy of the Department of Correctional Services, including early release, and finally made recommendations, including several on the early release of prisoners with HIV/AIDS.
In prison, HIV/AIDS exacerbates existing problems and also creates new ones, yet the potential for far-reaching positive impact remains. Prisons are an intervention opportunity to reach a segment of the population, which is most likely to need government services related to HIV/AIDS and is also least likely to receive them through any other channel. Most people who end up in prison come from marginalised communities with limited access to health, education, and/or other sources of social welfare. For many of these people, their interaction with the criminal justice system will be their most extensive exposure to public services of any kind. Without an appropriate response to HIV/AIDS in prisons, the potential consequences will be increasingly tragic for both prisoners and the communities they represent.
The Human Rights section looks at the discriminatory practices of the South African National Defence Force.
The first of a series of Human Rights inserts.