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Sick AIDS activist refuses anti-retrovirals
Jo-Anne Smetherham The Star, July 03 2002. Reprinted courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) leader Zackie Achmat, who is HIV-positive, has fallen ill with a lung infection but is refusing to take anti-retroviral drugs.
He will not be able to attend the world's biggest conference on HIV/AIDS in Barcelona this month, where he was scheduled to give an address on access to HIV treatment as a basic human right.
Achmat has been ill for about 10 days and is being nursed by friends at his Muizenberg, Cape Town, home.
His immune system has deteriorated to the extent that his doctor has recommended that he take anti-retroviral drugs.
He is maintaining a stance adopted several years ago, however, that he would not take the anti-AIDS drugs until they were available in the public sector.
"Zackie doesn't want to make too much of his illness because there are thousands of people in South Africa in a much worse position than him," TAC spokesperson Nathan Geffen said on Wednesday.
"He is not at death's door. He has a lung infection, but there are no signs of pneumonia at the moment."
Geffen said Achmat's T-cell count, which indicates the strength of the immune system, was 235.
Doctors recommend the anti-AIDS drugs when a patient's T-cell count is between 200 and 350, or there are clinical symptoms of AIDS.
Achmat could not speak to the press on Wednesday. He had a bacterial infection and had been taken for X-rays, although the results had not been received, a friend said. |
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