TAC apologises For discriminatory for HIV patients cubicles

People living with HIV in Edenburg and Thaba Nchu have complained that the isolated park home cubicles violate their right to privacy and violates their rights

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in the Free State has apologised to the provincial department of health for the miscalculated demand of park homes, which have since being criticised by the public protector, Thuli Madonsela, for discriminating against people living with HIV.

The park homes are movable structures placed in premises of different clinics’ to extend health care services exclusively for HIV patients.  During the recent visit by Madonsela, people living with HIV complained that these park homes violate their privacy. Many of the  people that complained the most were from Edenburg and Thaba-Nchu.

Their main concern is that even if a person has not yet revealed their status, when they are sent to this cubicles, their status become obvious to people. The TAC advocated for these park homes, because they felt then that HIV positive people did not have privacy because of the identification stickers that were placed on their files, which impinged on their right to confidentiality.

The TAC spokesperson in the province, Sello Mkhaliphi said the government cannot be blamed for the park home and admitted the fault lies with the NGO itself.

“After winning the case of availability of drugs in the primary health sector, we turned our attention to a practice that we felt violated our privacy. This practice entailed marking your file with a sticker.

“This is how people got to know about your status before you even tell them. We then suggested park homes where people will be treated separately. Obviously, government could not build any more structures within the existing clinics, so park homes were seen as a solution. Little did we know that we were shooting ourselves in the foot,” explained Mkhaliphi.

He emphasised that government did not come up with the idea of treating HIV positive people separately, but it was a demand from the TAC. This is the reason the movement is apologising for the complaint made by ordinary people who are not aware of how these park homes came to be.

“We have to admit that we did not do our homework. This also is a set-back for us because what we asked for has turned out to be further discrimination against the very people we were trying to protect. We should go back to the drawing board and talk to programme managers and explain that these park homes are no longer an option.”

Meanwhile, TAC picketed outside different clinics on Thursday as part of national day of service. In the Free State, the TAC decided not to march but demonstrated at the lower level of health facilities to raise awareness on different health challenges encountered in the province.

Two million people are on Antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in South Africa. However, there are still challenges in providing ARV’s to every HIV-positive person in the province. According to TAC, there are still clinics that have shortages of ARV’s. This increases defaulter rate and puts people’s lives in danger.

“We still have clinics that place their orders through other clinics. In some instances, the information gets lost at district level and never reaches the clinics. The only solution to this problem is if we cut out the middleman and have a co-coordinator who will deal with the health facility directly,” said Mkhaliphi.