LETTER FROM HEALTH GAP TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT

February 7, 2003

Minister of Foreign Affairs
Dr. NC Dlamini-Zuma
Fax: +27 12 351 0253


Deputy President
Mr. JG Zuma
Fax: +27 12 323 3114


Re: National HIV/AIDS Treatment and Prevention Plan

Dear Dr. Dlamini-Zuma and Deputy President Zuma

Health GAP (Global Access Campaign) is writing as a U.S.-based activist group addressing treatment access globally for people living with HIV/AIDS. Many of us have spent time in South Africa, including during the XIII International AIDS Conference in Durban in the summer of 2000. In addition to participating in the fight to modify intellectual property rules that have confounded access to cheaper medicines, we have led campaigns in the U.S. to establish the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, to increase U.S. donations, to reverse U.S. trade pressure on developing countries, and to eliminate the debt burden that Africa faces. In the context of these struggles and campaigns, we have directly supported the South African position in the drug company lawsuit against your Medicines and Related Substances Control Act and have opposed Vice President Gore and other U.S. officials in their effort to impose trade sanction pressure on the South African government.

South Africa has been a beacon of hope to the world, as your nation triumphed over apartheid, established a new democracy, adopted the world's premiere human rights Constitution, and undertook a healing process of truth and reconciliation. As the country at the very epicenter of the Global AIDS pandemic, with the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS and one of the fastest growing infection rates, it is essential that South Africa again demonstrate bold and decisive leadership both for its own population and as an example for the continent as a whole. Health GAP implores the South African government to act now to save the lives of millions of South African people living with HIV/AIDS.

Health GAP joins the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), and numerous South African organizations, in calling on the South African government to implement a national HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment plan and to sign the NEDLAC agreement it negotiated last November. We endorse TAC's "Stand Up for Our Lives" march in Cape Town on February 14, 2003, which will coincide with the opening of Parliament. We stand in solidarity with the thousands of people who will march for their right to healthcare and treatment. We ask the South African government to turn this march into a celebration of life by announcing the commitment to develop a program for universal access to anti-retroviral treatment for all South Africans living with HIV/AIDS.

Health GAP recognizes the fiscal challenges inherent in AIDS prevention and in providing free anti-retroviral treatment on a comprehensive basis especially given the excessive prices charges by the U.S. and European pharmaceutical industry. Thus, we also urge South Africa to exercise its legal right to issue compulsory licenses to ensure an affordable and sustainable supply of generic anti-retroviral medicines whether produced locally or imported. In this regard, the current application for a compulsory license before the Competition Commission should be promptly granted.

As a U.S.-based treatment activists, we will continue to demand that our government contribute its fair share of the funds necessary to effectively combat the global AIDS pandemic and that it stop opposing clarification and, if necessary, amendment to the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). While we welcome President Bush's pledge for increased funding for international HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment, we will campaign to make sure that these funding promises are kept, that bilateral programs coordinate with national prevention, care, and treatment plans, and that the bulk of the money is channeled through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Funding of the Global Fund will help ensure that money is wisely spent, that unfair conditions are not placed on South Africa or other countries, and that bureaucratic requirements are minimized. Similarly, we will insist that the U.S. fulfill its solemn pledge in the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health that countries that cannot efficiently produce generic medicines under compulsory licenses will have easy means to import low-cost medicines from high quality producers who achieve meaningful economies of scale. Health GAP again urges the South African government to act now to launch a national treatment and prevention plan. If the government fails to sign and begin to implement such a plan by the end of February 2003, it will have lost an historic opportunity to fulfill its Cabinetıs promise of April 17, 2002, and to meet its constitutional obligations to its citizens. In that unfortunate event, Health GAP will fully support TAC and their allies in their decision to pursue a national campaign of non-violent civil disobedience such as we have waged against U.S. intransigence here.

Sincerely,

Brook Baker, on behalf of Health GAP