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Rhodes scholars call for anti-retroviral drugs plan
02 February 2003. John Battersby. Saturday Star. Republished courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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Several hundred Rhodes scholars visiting South Africa as guests of the Mandela-Rhodes Foundation have signed a petition calling on President Thabo Mbeki to make anti-retrovirals as widely available as possible in South Africa.
The petition was distributed at the University of Cape Town's Jamieson Hall on Saturday following a panel discussion on HIV/AIDS, which included addresses by Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane and Treatment Action Committee founder Zackie Achmat and was chaired by the HIV-positive constitutional court judge Edwin Cameron.
The 400 Rhodes scholars, arguably the most influential network of its size and representing some three or four thousand Rhodes scholars worldwide, heard Achmat make an emotional appeal to the government to sign a national treatment plan.
He called on the Rhodes scholars to write to Deputy President Jacob Zuma to insist that government signed such a plan.
Laurence Ellis, an African-American Rhodes scholar from New Jersey, urged the group to sign the petition to Mbeki, calling on him to send an unequivocal message that HIV/AIDS is a sexually-transmitted disease and to initiate an open dialogue. |
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