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Adriana Stuijt
Holwerd
Netherlands
2004/06/18 3:22:17 AM Reply
The Aids genocide – Mbeki’s neglect

FOUNDER OF DUTCH ANTI-APARTHEID MOVEMENT BACKS PROBE OF AIDS FUNDING TO SA

June 16 2004 – EAST LONDON, South Africa. http://groups.msn.com/censorbugbear

Berend Schuitema, [email protected] , founder of the Dutch anti-apartheid movement and the Okhela organisation, (TELEPHONE 27 – (0)43-743-0601 –) and member of the communist party and the local coordinator of the “Jubilee antiprivatisation campaign” — this week added his public support for a high-level probe of the way in which non-governmental organisations and the SA authorities are spending the many millions of Euros streaming into South Africa to help fight the country’s devastating Aids-epidemic.

More than 5-million people have already fallen ill from Aids in South Africa since the country’s first Aids death in 1986 (who was an Afrikaner flight attendant)– yet thus far only about 5,000 people are being given free Aids-blockers at public health facilities countrywide, in spite of the multi-million Euroo-donations, such as those flowing to Nelson Mandela’s 46664 Fund, being raised specifically to provide free antiretroviral drug treatment for the poor.

background on Schuitema:
http://www.dispatch.co.za/2004/01/22/editoria/letters.html
http://www.dispatch.co.za/2004/01/22/editoria/letters.html

The probe was first called for by retired South African/Dutch medical journalist Adriana Stuijt in December 2003, when she filed a formal petition to this respect on behalf of the Treatment Action Campaign to probe the Aids funding to SA with the European Parliament (Petition Nr 0341/2003)

Although finding out that more than 243-million Euros had already been formally donated by EU countries for the SA Aids-prevention programmes, very little of this money could be accounted for by the EC, she said.

“There’s this near-total lack of detailed funding information from the European Community’s “Committee on Development and Cooperation” which oversees the Aids-funding to South Africa,” she said. The NGOs when approached for budget information also refused to reveal this, she added. Instead she received a nasty letter from the EC delegation in South Africa’s charge de(129)ffairs, Mr Juergens Lovasz, (tel 27 12-432-3200) telling her inaccurately that the South African NGOs — including Nelson Mandela’s 46664 aids fund — did not even have to reveal such information.

Under the EC-rules however, any organisation receiving donor funding is obliged to reveal their detailed budgets.

Stuijt has now asked for a probe by independent Dutch development aid expert Dr Hans Sluijter, who runs the independent monitoring agency European Credit Control http://www.europeancreditcontrol.com

“We asked them to investigate just one question,” says Stuijt.

WHAT THE HELL ARE THE SOUTH AFRICANS DOING WITH ALL THAT AIDS MONEY?

“namely, what the hell are the South Africans doing with all those millions upon millions of Euros — clearly they are not spending it on Aids-blockers for the poor, even though that’s the pretext under which this money is being collected here in Europe.

“There are now some 5-million Aids-infected people in South Africa. It amounts to criminal neglect that a mere 5,000 people are getting treatment countrywide in public clinics.” She and Sluijter estimate that a conservative 20-billion SA Rands have already been pumped ito South Africa from Europe alone to help fight Aids.

She this week accused the SA health minister and president Thabo Mbeki of deliberate stone-walling tactics — and which even including forcing the activist Treatment Action Campaign a “sweetheart deal with the ANC” so that the TAC would not actively campaign against the regime.
The TAC has since then only issued statements which echo SA official statements, she pointed out.

“There’s a lot of money involved here, and nobody wants to miss a slice of the cake.”

She also said that shortly before the national election, the SA president had made a big splash in the international news media by announcing his massive roll-out of ARV treatment at public health facilities – but that his health officials have since then thrown up such massive barriers to prevent treatment to the poor, that a mere 5000 people were now enrolled coountrywide in this much-hailed ARV roll-out. And most of those patients receiving treatment actually were in the “rebel province” of the Western Cape, she pointed out.

“South African nurses at the clinics in the rest of the country are now are even under orders to warn patients away with scare stories a”telling me they bout the ARV cocktails being more poisonous than Aids itself, I am being told” she said.

She believes that “the ARV programme is deliberately boycotted by top government officials themselves.

“Now the health minister has called for even more donor funding with inaccurate claims that there’s no drug supplies available, or that she doesn’t have enough medical personnel to administer the programme.”

“I believe that Mbeki and his health minister are making themselves guilty of the highest level criminal neglect of the poorest segment of the South African population, these are totally defenceless, often desperately ill families who cannot fight for their own rights.

Dr Gazi’s “Abba” clinics in East London do treat patients with ARVs:

“The Europeans who are contributing to these Aids funds must demand their money back or start demanding that it be redirected to those NGOs in South Africa which are clearly using it only for the free ARV programmes, such as Dr Gazi’s “ABBA” organisation in East London.

” It’s hard to know which NGOs can still be trusted to carry out the ARV rollouts — because even the Treatment Action Campaign seems to have been coopted into a sweetheart deal with the ruling ANC now,” she said.

CALL HER AT TELEPHONE NR 31 519 561 731 NETHERLANDS

Adriana Stuijt
Holwerd
Netherlands
2004/06/18 5:00:05 AM Reply
The Aids genocide – Mbeki’s neglect

MULTI-MILLION NELSON MANDELA’S 46664 FUND SPONSORS ONLY 132 PATIENTS COUNTRYWIDE FOR AIDS-BLOCKERS THUS FAR – BUT IS THE 46664 FUND PAYING FOR IT – OR NOT?

see website:
http://46664.tiscali.com/

How much money has this world-famous Aids-foundation already collected with its hugely popular music concerts, DVDs, CDs etc.?

Yet there’s no information on their website on exactly how much money they have received in donations, how much they have made on their music products and concerts, and how many paid employees the organisation actually has on its payroll.

Only 132 patients get ARV-treatment!

Yet the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Programme has thus far enrolled in total only 132 patients for ARV treatment — at twelve private clinics in Lusikisiki, Eastern Cape and at one private clinic at Manenberg, Western Cape which the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s hiv-Aids programme actually did not pay for but did lend its name to.

The Lusikisiki clinics are paid for by the Medicines Sans Frontieres organisation (Doctors without Borders).

The Manenberg clinic was paid for by the Tshepang Trust and the SA Medical Association as a test site, i.e. by the SA taxpayers/

Medecins Sans Frontie(168)¨res rural treatment site in Lusikisiki, Eastern Cape has about 600 students per month ” taking advantage of Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) facilities” at the 12 participating primary care clinics. (no ARV treatment involved)

They “provide psycho-social support to each other and raise awareness about the disease”

Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) services have been made available in all 12 of these private clinics run by Doctors without Borders.

A full TEN patients did start Anti-Retroviral (ARV) treatment in November 2003 — with enrollment expected to reach 100 by the end of April 2004. It’s not known whether this goal actually was achieved. Let’s presume it was.

Mr. Mandela visited Lusikisiki on December 12, 2003, and met the first patients receiving ARV treatment.

The site is being run in line with the Eastern Cape’s ARV rollout, with the aim of developing the site as a model for replication in rural sites across the country.

Tshepang treatment site in Manenberg, Western Cape:

This treatment site was formally launched in December 2003 by Mr. Mandela at GF Jooste Hospital (a public hospital, i.e. the facilities and salaries of the employees are being paid for by the SA taxpayers):

Thirty-two patients are currently undergoing ARV treatment there. It is reported that the “uptake is slower than originally anticipated”.

The site is a public-private venture with the South African Medical Association (SAMA), administered through the Tshepang Trust, to run an urban treatment site in the Western Cape.

This site is being developed as a model for public-private partnerships around HIV/AIDS treatment.

Free State:
The Mandela foundation also sponsored a study on HIV prevalence among 2-9 year old children launched in February 2004.

The follow up study to the Nelson Mandela/HSRC community-based study is currently under review. This study will track trends and behavioural change since the time of the last study. It’s not sure how many children are being tested – but none are being treated with ARVs in this programme.

The research is being conducted in the Free State in collaboration with the Provincial Department of Health – i.e. it is being paid for by the SA taxpayers, and is run by public health officials.

It’s not clear how much money has been donated by the Nelson Mandela fund for this programme, either: The employees are paid for by the taxpayers, as are the facilities.