The Medicines Control Council (MCC) is mandated by law to protect South Africans from fake doctors who say they can cure Aids, cancer and other conditions with medicines that have not been proven in any way to work. It has a directorate of law enforcement specifically so that it can carry out this mandate. Yet it is completely failing to do its job.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) will be asking detailed questions about what the MCC's law enforcement division has actually done to put a stop to the flood of fraudsters dispensing medicine and trying to trick South Africans out of their money.

Rudi Boshoff has attracted media attention recently for adverts he has placed in Die Burger newspaper referring to himself as "Dr" and claiming to be able to cure "thousands" of diseases by using a "miracle machine" and various medicines. The newspaper has since revealed that Mr Boshoff is not registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa or the Allied Health Professions Council of South Africa.

But Boshoff is only one of countless numbers of people who make these claims on street corners and in newspapers across the country every day. These bogus doctors can freely act in direct contravention of the law, even advertising their products in national newspapers.

HIV/Aids is a specific focus of these fraudsters, because of the atmosphere of suspicion of conventional therapies created by former health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and because there are hundreds of thousands of people who are infected with HIV and desperate for answers.

The Medicines and Related Substances Control Act is absolutely clear that the MCC is responsible for ensuring that "No person shall compound or dispense a medicine unless he or she is authorised thereto in terms of the Pharmacy Act, 1974, or is the holder of a licence as contemplated in subsection (1) (a)".

While any act of fraud is despicable, it is particularly repulsive when it involves taking advantage of people who are ill, and potentially discouraging them from taking treatments that would actually help them.

The MCC came under enormous pressure from Tshabalala-Msimang to not act against people claiming to be able to cure Aids with alternative remedies. These days of Aids dissidence are now gone, but it seems that the MCC has not caught up with the change in the political environment. The DA will therefore take this matter further to ensure that the MCC protects the public from bogus doctors.