Home / 29 November 2005 - TAC & SAMA v MCC, DOH and Rath
TAC Press Conference on court action regarding Rath
29 November 2005
This source tape covered the Treatment Action Campaign and the South African Medical Association's press conference. The press conference was held on the day that these two organisations filed papers in the Cape High Court against the Medicines Control Council (MCC) and the national and provincial Departments of Health to address their inaction in enforcing the Medicines Act against Matthias Rath and his Foundation.
Vuyiseka Dubula: My name is Vuyiseka Dubula from the Treatment Action Campaign. I’m the Western Cape Treatment Literacy co-ordinator. I want to thank everyone, first of all, for attending this press conference and I’m going to start by introducing our guest speakers today. On my right hand side, it’s Mike Louw from COSATU and from my left hand side, our General Secretary, Sipho Mthathi and we have Professor Denise White from the South African Medical Association, SAMA, and then we have Mazibuko Jara from the SACP Young Communist League and we have Dr Mark Sundrop from SAMA and we have Sandile Ndunge from SAMA and umam’am{isiXhosa}[my mother] from SAMA as well, so welcome everyone. We’re going to start by having inputs starting from Sipho and then we’re going to have Mark from SAMA and then we have Mazibuko Jara from Young Communist League and then Professor Denise White and then we’re going to take questions after some short input from the guest speakers and then we can take it from there.
Sipho Mthathi: Thanks everyone for taking the time, I’m going to be really short because all of you have a copy of the press statement that we’ve made, the rest of the issues will come through the discussion. I think … just to set the tone for this court case and what it means for the Treatment Action Campaign. I think it’s important to just remind yourself what has just happened in the past couple of weeks, I think all of you have taken that UNAIDS has released the annual epidemic update, a report that is published every year and I think there’s a couple of things that that report highlighted. One is that at least 5 million new HIV infections took place in the world and we know that in South Africa, last year alone, we had at least 500 000 new infections and we know that the report says that South Africa is lagging behind in dealing with prevention. We also know the report paints, yet again, the tragic reality that at least 3 million people died last year alone, I mean they have died in the past few months of this year, 2005 alone, and that we know in South Africa that we are living with the reality that at least 600 000 need treatment. Government’s own anti-natal reports says that at least 6 million people currently live with HIV in our country, so I think the point I’m making with those numbers is that HIV and AIDS continue to devastate the world, it continues to devastate our country and what that means is that leadership from everyone is critical, we cannot at this point be equivocating about what is needed. I think the world has reached a consensus that many more things need to be done and the HIV/AIDS epidemic is complex. But I think what the world has reached consensus around is that currently, for people with AIDS, antiretroviral treatment is the only thing we know to be effective and to be able to reverse the course of AIDS and to curtail premature death. And I think therefore, for us, it’s important that we deal with the current reality that at the moment we have a situation of a person who is himself a drug company merchant, Matthias Rath, you’ve heard the story many times this year because we’ve been dealing with this issue for the whole year. He has come to our country, he has seen an opportunity in the continuing denialism particularly by our health minister and the equivocation of what needs to be done to support people living with AIDS in our country and he has come to sell what he calls vitamins which are in fact drugs. And I think many of you know the problem we’ve got with that, he has gone as far as conducting clinical trials, he has gone as far as employing people in communities who are desperate, who are poor and also who are dealing with the reality of people who have AIDS and also people who need assistance and he’s spreading a message which goes against government’s own policy which says that: at the moment, antiretroviral is the only thing that will be provided to people and that what is registered by the Medicines Control Council is antiretroviral treatment and that government will give supplementary nutrients including multivitamins. Then, what Matthias Rath is doing, he’s spreading a false message and false information about registered medicines but I think the more tragic issue which has catapulted us to the point that we are now calling for the courts to instruct the Minister of Health to act and to act with urgency is that he’s going around saying that his medicines are in fact a cure for AIDS and that the medicines that are known to be a lifelong treatment are toxic to the point that he claims that they will kill 
people. But I think the bottom line for us is at this stage, which is why we’re here today, is that we have for the past few months, as early as the end of 2004, been trying to get the Medicines Control Council to say: according to the Medicines Regulation Act in our country, no one is allowed to conduct unauthorised clinical trials; Matthias Rath is doing that, no one is allowed to spread false messages and make false claims about their drugs and their treatment without having those checked; and Matthias Rath has done exactly that. What we have done is we got pages and pages which detail the effort we have made to try and get the Medicines Control Council to act, to stop Matthias Rath’s illegal activities and you will see in the affidavits here that there is sufficient evidence to link directly a couple of people’s deaths to the unlawful way in which Matthias Rath has prescribed his drugs. So we have called for the past few months on the Medicines Control Council to act to stop Matthias Rath. We have also called on the Department of Health, particularly the Minister of Health to act to stop Matthias Rath and what we have asked the Minister to do is to affirm government policy and government policy at the moment is to say: provide care and treatment to people and that those who have AIDS should be given the option to take antiretroviral therapy. You will have heard last night that she has said that according to her, Matthias Rath is not carrying out any illegal activities. And so we are forced and are left with no option but to go to court, to say Matthias Rath is creating confusion, fear around antiretroviral treatment, which is the treatment that government has made a policy to provide and that this is leading to people dying because it means that some people do not go to seek treatment because they have been told that there’s an alternative that has not been proven. It also means that the greater impact which has forced us to act is that in our country we know that at least half a million people need treatment and if we continue this way, with the confusion and the denial that we have seen being perpetuated through the activities of Matthias Rath, that it means that the crisis we have is only going to become worse and so we are going to court today to ask the Minister to do a proper investigation and to stop Matthias Rath but particularly, for the Medicines Control Council to do it’s job in order to save lives. Thank you.
Vuyiseka Dubula: Now we’re going to have our second speaker; that would be Dr Mark Sundrop from SAMA.
Dr Mark Sundrop: Thanks very much, thank you ladies and gentlemen. I’m Mark Sundrop, I’m from the South African Medical Association and I’m just going to make a few, sort of brief, comments. To my left is Professor Denise White, she’s the Vice Chairman of the South African Medical Association, our Chairperson would be here today as well, that’s Dr Kgosi Letlapi but he’s currently out the country and he sends his apologies. As you will see from the papers in front of you, SAMA is co-litigating with TAC in this issue and I’m sure Sipho or most would agree that in fact we would rather not be here, we would have hoped that this could have been avoidable because really the reason we would rather not be here is we would rather be out there doing the job we’re supposed to do and that’s looking after our patients and in fact dealing with this pandemic. We have really been forced into this situation and due to no lack of trying that we tried to get our elected representatives to deal with this issue. The South African Medical Association representing the vast majority of doctors and the profession in the country, took this decision to co-litigate with the TAC in a democratic process within the association and more importantly we feel we are merely fulfilling our fiduciary obligation both as professionals but as advocates for patient care as well and that’s why we have agreed to go with the TAC on this issue. And all we’re asking is that our elected representatives do the job and deal with these people who are clearly sowing deceit. It is unacceptable for anybody like Dr Rath and his foundation to be conducting clinical trials on people without any ethical clearance, which in itself is not a crime, it’s not illegal but all those sitting here would know that we have the biggest precedent in the world history as to why we want ethical clearance for clinical trials and that was what happened to people in concentration camps in the Second World War. That’s the reason we actually want ethical clearance for trials in modern medical science, otherwise people can do anything to anybody and we can’t leave that up to human beings because human nature tends to be a bit cruel. So he is conducting clinical trials without any ethical clearance in this country. As I said, that in itself, is not a crime, it’s not illegal, it’s clearly unethical, it’s clearly unacceptable and it should be stopped. More importantly, what he’s doing in terms of dispensing medicines is an illegal action because he’s contravening existing legislation in terms of medicine control and that’s what we’re asking, we’re asking for our elected representatives to fulfil their duty and to act in terms of the law against these people so that we can get on with our job and not have to spend time here, going to court and dealing with these people. It is not our primary responsibility, it is the responsibility of our elected representatives and we call on them to do their job. Denise would like to say something.
Denise White: I think at this point that Dr Mark Sundrop as a spokesperson on HIV/AIDS for the South African Medical Association has really capsulated all the issues. For many years and particularly this year, the medical association has become more and more disturbed at the situation around HIV and AIDS and the fact that more and more people are dying due to the fact that we are not able to enforce some of our clinical imperatives that we know will save lives. Clearly, as my colleague has said, we would not wish to be here and taking this sort of action unless we felt morally and ethically obliged to make a stand for all the people in this country, as doctors, our patients do not have any means of in fact speaking out and claiming what is rightfully theirs, their health and their lives. In particular, I think our concern is the confusion that has been sown around the issue of what patients should take. But the promotions of the medications that are being promoted by the Rath group and the stance against the ARVs, that is going to be a huge monumental task for us as medical doctors, just to in fact try and reverse some of the confusion about what is in fact the right treatment back to health and life. I haven’t anything more to say at this point, I think it’s mostly been covered and if there are any questions, obviously we will answer those.
Vuyiseka Dubula: Now we’re going to hand over to Mazibuko and then Mike afterwards.
Mazibuko Jara: Thanks Vuyiseka, my name is Mazibuko Jara; I’m the Deputy National Secretary of the Young Communist League. As the Young Communist League, our concern on this matter starts with the fact that yet again we’re going to go through another round of waste of the taxpayers’ money and energy by a Minister who seems to be hell-bent to basically not provide political leadership on HIV/AIDS as a whole. But in addition to that, she seems quite committed to sow confusion and undermine any possibly positive public health message about HIV/AIDS by associating herself with the Rath Foundation and thereby reinforcing and strengthening AIDS denialism in South Africa. We’re extremely concerned about these because the most vulnerable or the most affected group by this confusion and also ravaged essentially by HIV/AIDS is young people, particularly young women. And we call on the Minister to basically, still at this late stage, reconsider her association with the Rath Foundation, reconsider what she has been doing for a number of years now, basically to promote denialism and also undermine government’s own programme to provide HIV/AIDS treatment to hundreds of thousands of people in South Africa, who are in need. We also understand that the action being taken today by the TAC and SAMA is an action of last resort but it’s also an important action if we look at it in terms of political democracy as a whole because once a government minister fails to enforce and play their roles, then organisations such as the TAC and SAMA have to use the courts to enforce the rights of people but also to ensure that illegal activities are stopped. As the YCL finally, we call on young people in South Africa to come out and support this court action because clearly this court action is about enforcing their rights, is about promoting their interests. But this court action on its own, without their voices, without their energy, without their passion, being out on the streets is not going to be sufficient. Thanks Chair.
Mike Louw: My name is Mike Louw and I represent COSATU and let me remind you that the South African Medical Association is a COSATU affiliate, so I’m necessarily in. My comrades have spoken about and have largely covered what anybody would like to say about this particular issue. But I think that what we need to add is our concern around the fact that all of this is happening and we have seen that many companies or some major companies have adopted HIV/AIDS workplace programmes. There’s a lack in many companies, there isn’t as much emphasis being put on dealing with the issue at the workplace. And some of the things that are happening now, we would probably suggest, is because there isn’t a proper approach and the Minister is causing all sorts of confusion not only amongst those who are suffering but it gives some businesses some excuse not to adopt and put in place full HIV/AIDS workplace programmes in order to make sure that people are going to be supported. So this court action is supported by COSATU and we would obviously consider and talk to the TAC and other organisations in support of this action to take further action and to take action to another level and we would argue that we should strongly consider making sure that other forms of action are going to be taken as well, besides the court action, that there would be consideration for whatever action is needed because it would seem that the only way that government and others listen is that when we do take action of a stronger nature, that’s our experience, that’s how we feel, that things change and we obviously would be in support of and organise whatever needs to be organised. Thank you very much.
Vuyiseka Dubula: Ok, thanks everyone for your input. Now we’re going to allow questions but I’m going to take four questions at a time and then we can have input from the speakers and then we take another four. I have two hands, three, ok I will start with you.
Journalist: {Inaudible question asked.}
Mark Sundrop: Perhaps I could just clarify that, what I’m referring to is when you conduct a clinical trial anywhere in the world, before you do such a trial, in fact before you conduct any clinical research that’s involved in patients, be they alive or dead quite frankly, you need what we call Ethics Clearance of Research Ethics Clearance and most universities, most medical schools and even some private bodies around the country, you can apply to them in writing for such clearance. That some sort of ethics body has peer reviewed your research and made sure that the research has been conducted in such a way that it won’t infringe the rights of other people. And most people, in fact anybody who wishes to publish such work, would get research ethics clearance. Now in most cases, that itself, is not a legal requirement, if you want to do a little research somewhere, you don’t have to get research ethics clearance but by not getting it, you are practicing unethically and if you want to publish your work, no respectable journal or any publication is going to publish your work without appropriate research clearance. So that in itself is not an absolute legal requirement but as soon as you’re using drugs in any ethical or at least in any research work then there is a legal requirement for you to get clearance both for the drugs and then for the research and you can apply through such bodies in South Africa, the Medicines Control Council being such a body. So what the Rath Foundation is doing is clearly both unethical but also illegal and that’s why we’re calling on the actual body such as the MCC to fulfil their legal obligation and actually act against these people and we’ve been asking them to do that, over a year, if I’m not mistaken, because this in fact started almost 13 months ago.
Sipho Mthathi: Just to add to that, I mean we know that the Rath Foundation and Sam Mhlongo had in fact applied to the Medical University of South Africa, MEDUNSA, and had been turned down exactly because the description of their clinical trial did not fit the ethical criteria and so they have in fact been told by an ethical body in our country that what they want to do is illegal and that’s exactly why we have repeatedly tried to get the MCC and others to end, particularly the Minister to say that this is illegal. Thank you.
Journalist: {Inaudible question asked.}
Denise White: We actually don’t have them, there may be some data that we’re not aware of it.
Mark Sundrop: In fact, an HIV colleague of mine, who practices out in the Worcester Hospital area, he was going to be here today but unfortunately he’s been held up with work and he’s in fact commenting on some of the papers that are now before the court, that they in fact are seeing patients coming to them, either going off treatment or not wanting to start treatment because of confusion being sown. So as Professor White has just said, unfortunately we don’t have surveys and numbers but there is enormous amount of data coming from treatment sites where people are expressing extreme concern because of just confusion, they don’t know what is right and what’s wrong anymore and this is clearly intolerable because the United Nations is telling us that we’ve got one of the worst pandemics on the globe with HIV, yet we can’t get people to stand up and unequivocally state that HIV causes AIDS and that when it’s necessary you should be using antiretroviral therapy as the only proven therapy that delays and retards and reverts HIV and AIDS. I mean it’s laughable and extreme.
Denise White: And just to add to that, obviously one of the concerns is placing a patient onto ARVs requires almost 100% adherence for it to actually work. So the confusion or the doubt in patients’ mind, around what should be the treatment of choice if they have perhaps started on ARVs and they then stop, as you know there’s very little chance that the ARVs are going to be effective, so that’s a great concern.
Sipho Mthathi: But I think, just to add again, the TAC runs a treatment Literacy Programme nationally and we deal directly with people who are either waiting to take treatment or have already started treatment and we’re beginning to see people coming back with questions, wondering whether they need to continue, wondering whether after adherence counselling they should go on to treatment. I think the issue for us is, yes, people have a right but I think as we’ve made it clear, the problem with the way that these clinical trials were being conducted is that with ARVs before you go on treatment, you’re going to be told exactly what to expect, what the side effects are, how you will be managed. But with these drugs of Matthias Rath, people don’t have the choice to have informed consent before they take the treatment and that’s problematic and illegal because according to the National Health Act, according to the Patients’ Right Charter and according to the way that medicines regulations is supposed to be done, that’s illegal, people have to know what they are taking. We haven’t got the exact figures because that’s difficult to measure but we are collecting the data where we are working in the communities to prove that this is sowing confusion.
Journalist: Do you actually have proof that he is selling the multivitamins and not just handing them out because what he claims is that he’s not selling them, he’s just sort of giving them to SANCO (South African National Civic Organisation) who distributes them, and my second question which is for Mark, just to check that about being illegal because drugs are used and there are tests, what exactly makes a drug as opposed to just sort of a vitamin supplement, how does that work?
Sipho Mthathi: I’ll take the question on the proof. I think you will see in the affidavits that we’ve got and we’re making those available, that it is untrue the claim that Matthias Rath and his foundation make, that they are distributing the vitamins for free because they are selling them and the evidence is both in the testimonies of people who have already been approached by the foundation as well as the fact that some of his drugs are in pharmacies. And so I think that there is clear evidence that he is not just distributing them and if he claims that, then he needs to tell us why he’s charged people up to R80 or so for a dose of treatment in some cases. But I mean, irrespective of that, what he’s doing is still illegal.
Mark Sundrop: According to the law, if you distribute a drug, even if you give it away by definition in our role in the Medicines Act that is savage. So whether you charge somebody or not, according to the law, the law is clear on this. Clearly the reason why he’s doing it is to use it for marketing overseas because he’s done it in … {interruption}
Mark Sundrop: Just to answer your question that you directed to me a bit further, if you walk in to any pharmacy and pick up any new supplement that you refer to as a vitamin, you’ll see on the side that it has a registration code and that code has been granted by the MCC. Just because you say it’s a vitamin, doesn’t make it safe, even certain vitamins in excess can be extremely dangerous. So anything you package and you want to use in this country needs to be registered and that registration package is in place not to create red-tape for bureaucracy, it’s in place to protect the public, otherwise I’ll go home tonight, concoct something in my garage and start selling it tomorrow in a bottle and say it’s a supplement. I could put anything in there; that is the point. It is there to protect the public. The registration processes are a legal requirement, even for supplements and vitamins, as you put it.
Journalist: I just wanted to find out whether this … {inaudible}
Sipho Mthathi: It’s been filed this morning, so they’ve got it.
Journalist: I’m sorry, I was a bit late so I might have missed this. Given that your defamation case against Rath is still dragging along, realistically what sort of time frame are you looking at here before you expect to see any action?
Vuyiseka Dubula: Ok, then I’ll take the other question, then we will wrap up.
Anthony Reese: My name is Anthony Reese, I used to work for Dr Rath as his public health advisor. I’ve worn a few hats for being an expert advisor as a member of the complementary Codex Alimentarius Commission. I was involved with the importation of a product called VitaCell, Dr Rath was wanting to bring it in as a food supplement. He never received any authorisation from the Department of Food Control as a dietary supplement. The product is registerable under the Act 101 of 196 of the Medicines Control Act because the associated claims on the product and the advertising attached there to, is in contravention to the Act and therefore the product is a medicine by definition of the Medicines Control Act. The importation of the product is illegal, the storage of the product is illegal and the administration of the product, by even giving it away for free, as Nathan stated, is by definition selling in terms of the Medicines Control Act. I’ve been very vocal about this and I believe that it’s time the government actually stands up against this kind of abuse that is taking place and I do see that we have to put pressure on the state to amend the Medicines Control Act purely because the whole definition of so-called complementary medicines is standing at a very grey area at this time and that there was a call-up for complementary medicines in early 2001 to register these substances and there has been no further action by the Medicines Control Council to bring the entire industry of natural healthcare into order. That is why these claims and abuse of the system are taking place and I call on the government to stop this immediately.
Vuyiseka Dubula: Now, I’m taking the last hand and then Sipho can answer the definition question.
Journalist: I just want to, perhaps, be more specific about the type of action you are talking about.
Mike Louw: Well, we certainly start organising consultation with the organisations and we know the type of action that we are known for doing. In this case, we probably think that it should be escalated somewhat because we are dealing with an area that clearly has an impact on poor people, it’s an injustice to the poor and for the government to wake up, we believe that there should be pretty strong action that is going to be taken and we’ll obviously elaborate on that once we’ve got things together.
Sipho Mthathi: Just on the question of time frame, I think regarding the defamation case, we’ve been promised that a ruling would be made in the past two weeks, we’re waiting for it, our lawyers are speaking to the judge, Judge Desai and so we expect judgement on that soon. In terms of the time frame for this one, because we feel that it’s an emergency that this kind of experimenting on people in the way that was described by Smuts Ngonyama a few years ago when he was criticising what was in fact a legal act where Medicins Sans Frontiere said imported registered medicines from Brazil that had been approved by the world and he criticised that, and this is the same argument we make here, Matthias Rath has come and is using particularly poor black people as guinea pigs and we are shocked by the fact that people like Smuts Ngonyama who were the first advocates, Malusi Gigaba and others were the first advocates to claim at the time, and we’re dealing here with medicines that are registered, approved by our own constitutional bodies and today, they are not even saying a word and it saddens us that that is the case because then that makes a direct political endorsement of Matthias Rath’s actions. And I think that as we are taking the minister to court as a representative of government, we are actually asking our president and all our political leaders to put this to an end now because this requires political leadership and it could be ended tomorrow and we are appealing to all in parliament to instruct as they did in 2003, the minister of health said ‘implement a comprehensive treatment plan to save our people’s lives. We are appealing to parliament and to all our leaders to say ‘end this today, otherwise get out and we’re hoping that that will settle the matter and we wouldn’t even have to go to trial. And so we are really hoping that political leadership will prevail to end this.
Vuyiseka Dubula: Is there any burning question? Thanks everyone for coming.
