Government said this yesterday, responding to media enquiries about the report compiled by a joint health department and National Treasury task team on the cost implications of providing antiretrovirals to people living with HIV/AIDS in the country.
The team was set up last year, to also investigate the benefits of various treatment options.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) leaked the “key findings” of the report to the mainstream media yesterday, allegedly from health department’s director-general Ayanda Ntsaluba’s presentation to health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and her MECs in May.
However, government said the report was in fact an early draft, which was leaked to the media some weeks ago.
Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) issued a statement today saying government “consistently indicated that work was continuing on finalising the report for submission to Cabinet, and that the matter was being treated with utmost urgency”.
“This much was indicated by Deputy President Jacob Zuma to the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) during their meeting with the SA National AIDS Council (Sanac) some three weeks ago,” said the statement. “At that meeting both sides accepted one another's integrity, and SANAC had hoped that the interaction would set relations between it and the TAC on a better footing,” it said.
As a matter of fact, government said there had only been one Cabinet meeting since the TAC met Sanac, and by then the Task Team was still working on issues that needed to be finalised to allow Cabinet to take a final decision, without having to refer the report back to the Task Team.
It said the team of Ministers working on this issue had requested the task team to ensure the information in the report was complete and had integrity in all areas - including matters of infrastructure, statistical estimates, costs in the medium to long-term and constitutional rights, among others.
“The ‘Report” that the TAC is referring to, information from which is published in the Independent Newspapers, is in fact a very first draft, which they TAC had leaked to Business Day many weeks ago.
“It seems likely to us that, because there is a Nedlac meeting tomorrow, where this matter would arise, and because the TAC knows the issue will come before Cabinet soon, they are trying opportunistically to place themselves at the centre of attention”.
Government said there was no need for “theatrics” in dealing with the matter of HIV and AIDS.
“All of us need to co-operate in dealing with the comprehensive work required to fight the pandemic, an element of which is the issue of Antiretroviral Treatment”. – BuaNews.
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