empowerment or information. But young people are not the problem, they are the solution."
Rose de Freitas

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Activists' victory in South Africa

Activists from the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) have finally won the last of five separate legal cases in South Africa which now forces the government to provide antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV.
Mark Heywood (pictured right), TAC's national secretary, explained that the latest Constitutional Court ruling had now ended "a long and very bitter conflict" between activists, the South African government and the pharmaceutical companies.
Since 1998, the government had placed a series of "delays and disputes" and raised "a myriad of excuses" to try and prevent access to life-saving medications, Heywood explained, and even last year there were over 85,000 mother-to-child transmissions of HIV in the country.
It was the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, which provided a national constitution based on human rights, that finally decided the case.
The TAC had done all in its power to avoid litigation against the

government, he said, and it was only after three and a half years of negotiation as well as extensive lobbying, demos, vigils and marches that they resorted to legal action.
The TAC legal victory now means that the government must allow patients in state hospitals to receive nevirapine, to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus, and also means that programmes in 18 hospitals around the country must be rolled out nationally.

The final judgement, by South Africa's Constitutional Court at the beginning of July, covers all HIV treatments and not just MTCT programmes, Heywood said.