Dear Minister
OPEN LETTER REQUESTING YOUR IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION IN THE CASE OF PROFESSOR CYRIL KARABUS
We request you to intervene urgently to secure the release of Professor Cyril Karabus, a South African citizen, from incarceration in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Yesterday, TAC and HIV-911 Programme sent a joint letter to the Durban Business Fair and the Provincial and Ethekwini AIDS Councils, regarding the plans of Umlingo WamaNgcolosi Lifestyle to exhibit at the upcoming Durban Business Fair. The letter outlines the potential harm to public health of providing a platform to the organisation to spread misinformation about HIV/AIDS and its treatment. The full letter can be read here
The Kwazulu-Natal (KZN) MEC for Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, today released a press statement responding to the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) complaint to the Public Protector about the use and procurement of an unsafe circumcision device called the Tara KLamp. His full statement can be read here
KZN Government continues to rollout expensive and dangerous circumcision device
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has lodged a complaint with the Public Protector against the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for health and the KZN Department of Health (DoH). The complaint asks the Public Protector to investigate the procurement and ongoing use of the Tara KLamp (TK) to perform medical circumcisions on adolescent and adult men in KZN. The TK is a plastic device that is clamped over the foreskin of a man’s penis for 7 to 10 days until the foreskin dies and falls off (sometimes it has to be surgically removed).
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” -- Nelson Mandela, detained at Pollsmoor Prison from 1982 – 1988. He had TB during this time.
On 28 August 2012 the Constitutional Court will hear argument in the matter between Dudley Lee and the Minister of Correctional Services. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and partners will at the same time picket outside the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg and Pollsmoor prison in Cape Town.
TAC has lodged a complaint with the Public Protector against senior members of the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) government. For further details, please attend our press conference this Thursday, 23 August at 12pm. The press conference will include speakers from TAC, the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society of Southern Africa and the South African Medical Association.
The press conference will take place at:
Community Media Trust Durban
331 West Street, West Tower
10 Floor, Room 10 A
Durban CBD
TAC and MSF call for the inclusion of fixed-dose antiretroviral combinations purchased at reasonable prices in South Africa’s new ARV tender
TAC intervention leads to important legal advance: public interest concerns are relevant in determining interim interdict in patent cases
On 26 July 2012, the Supreme Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in the matter between the Aventis group of pharmaceutical companies and Cipla’s group of generic pharmaceutical companies.
Statement by the Treatment Action Campaign, SECTION27, Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam