Nokuthula places all her hope in the traditional healer, David Ngalana, even though he acknowledges he can give her only limited help. Nokuthula knows nothing about Aids drugs. There are no antiretrovirals for the people of her township, so they may as well not exist. She will drink her treebark infusions and convince herself they failed to save her husband only because he did not take them properly. In that way, maybe, hope can triumph for a while over despair.
Trips stands for trade related intellectual property rights.
The pharmaceutical companies say section 15c of the Medicines Act 1997 was not properly drafted in line with Trips. They say it gives the government too broad a power to buy in cheap medicines from abroad, when the situation is not strictly an emergency.