Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - August 31, 2003
Bonny Schoonakker
From tomorrow morning, the 41-year-old chairman of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) will start taking antiretroviral drugs for the first time since he was diagnosed HIV-positive 12 years ago, ending his self-imposed ban on the life-saving medication.
Confirming an announcement he made at an HIV/Aids conference in Durban earlier this month, Achmat said on Friday that he would start his drug treatment tomorrow morning by taking a combination of nevirapine, stavudine and lamivudine.
"I am in a lucky position because I have a strong set of organs," said Achmat, who attributed his lingering good health to the fact that he has never smoked cigarettes or abused drugs and has drunk alcohol "occasionally only over the last four years".
During this period, Achmat won world renown for his courage in embarking on a "pharmaceutical fast" that forbade taking the drugs that may now save his life.
Rejecting requests from friends, family and former President Nelson Mandela to relent, Achmat turned his back on the drugs until they were freely available to all South Africans, especially those millions who do not have the money to pay for them.
On August 8, the Cabinet gave Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang until the end of next month to plan the roll-out of the drugs.
Achmat's blossoming relationship with Eduard Grebe, a young philosophy graduate from Stellenbosch University, has also helped to end his antiretroviral fast.
He said their growing love for each other had strengthened his will to live.
Grebe was not HIV-positive, Achmat said, and the two practised safe sex.
Achmat said that the drugs he will start taking tomorrow, when he wakes up at his home in Muizenberg, near Cape Town, will cost him around R300 a month.
That's a fraction of the R4 500 a month it would have cost before a series of victories won by the TAC over drug companies in South Africa's courts.
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