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Amnesty on rape and Aids in SA
Business Day (South Africa), May 26, 2005

Amnesty criticises government over slow roll-out of aids drugs

By Jonathan Katzenellenbogen and Tamar Kahn

Johannesburg - Amnesty International criticised government in its annual report, released yesterday, for the slow roll-out of antiretrovirals.
By August last year, when the London-based human rights group visited SA, only about half of government's target of 53000 people had access to antiretroviral drugs through state-accredited facilities.
This was short of the figure of about 500000 people that the Actuarial Society says require treatment with antiretroviral drugs.
The initial target date was March last year, but government moved it out by a year. It said recently that only 42000 people were receiving antiretrovirals.
Amnesty also said President Thabo Mbeki "publicly minimised the concerns of service-providing and advocacy organisations about the high levels of rape and the link with the epidemic of HIV infection among younger women".
According to the AIDS Law Project, connected to the University of the Witwatersrand, 50000-60000 people are receiving antiretrovirals at private health-care facilities. The Actuarial Society says about 5-million South Africans are infected with HIV, and 10% of them require treatment with the drugs.
SA was also criticised in the report for poor access to justice and health care for rape survivors and for deaths in police custody. Child and adult rape survivors interviewed by Amnesty said they experienced "considerable" difficulty getting further medical treatment or psychological care, the rights group said. This was due to a combination of social stigma, unemployment, and lack of secure housing.
Attempts to contact health department officials for comment late yesterday were unsuccessful.
Amnesty did give SA credit for improvements in the justice system for rape survivors, including policies on family violence, child protection and sexual-offences units.
The rights group also said "credible allegations of torture or ill-treatment" were made by criminal suspects, refugees, and political activists. And it said corrupt practices by immigration officials obstructed access to justice by asylum seekers.