Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - August 16, 2007
Brendan Boyle

Achmat, whose activism around HIV/Aids won him a Nobel nomination, said Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was actively reversing gains made in the fight against Aids while Madlala-Routledge was her deputy.

During a demonstration at the University of Cape Town against President Thabo Mbeki's decision to sack Madlala-Routledge because she was not a team player, Achmat said: "Her dismissal is a great tragedy. It is creating a sense of fear and panic among us."

Achmat said Tshabalala-Msimang owed the nation an explanation after the Sunday Times reported that she had been drunk during a 2005 hospital stay, had abused staff, and had forced medical staff to go out and buy booze for her.

He said: "The minister has to answer to us what has affected her duties and made her so deeply irrational at many press conferences and in many meetings with us.

"Alcoholism is an illness like any other, but if an illness affects the possibility of you carrying out your job, then you should say so. I believe the minister has questions to answer there."

Achmat, who is HIV-positive, retired from active leadership of the Treatment Action Campaign after the government adopted a National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS earlier this year.

The plan targets a 50 percent reduction in the rate of new infections and putting 80 percent of those who need it on anti-retroviral treatment by 2011. The plan was negotiated and agreed while Tshabalala-Msimang was on sick leave pending and after a liver transplant.

Stalled Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka's efforts to revive the South African National Aids Council;

# Blocked implementation of Mlambo-Ngcuka's instruction to seek a settlement in the TAC's court bid to force the government to treat HIV-positive prisoners in a KwaZulu-Natal prison;

# Blocked the upgrade of therapy to block mother-to-child transmission of the virus;

# Stalled an agreement to train and authorise nurses to administer anti-retroviral therapy; and

# Slowed the licensing of community clinics to prescribe anti-retroviral therapy to a pace at which it would take 14 years to get all of them on board.

"There is a deep, deep deep fear that we have that the Minister of Health is back in the old way that she has been. That means that I have had to come out of retirement and I am going to be around now until we have a (National Strategic Plan) in place," he said.

Chief government spokesman Themba Maseko has said Madlala- Routledge's dismissal would not slow implementation of the plan.

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