Ontario's health care system -- four days after his death.

In a video report broadcast across Canada this month, Mr. Thatcher harshly condemned Ontario Health Minister Ms Frances Lankin and her Cabinet colleagues for abandoning people with AIDS and HIV who cannot afford treatment options.

The video was taped on December 30, three days before Mr. Thatcher died, at age 36, in Canada of central nervous system complications caused by AIDS.

In his report, Mr. Thatcher -- who co-chaired the Toronto-based activist group, AIDS Action Now!, and sat on the Health Minister's AIDS advisory panel or the Ontario Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS (OACHA) -- said many people living with the AIDS virus were unable to afford critical treatment.

And despite a drug funding policy hammered out by the AIDS advisory panel last May, he said nothing had been done in more than a year to address the issue.

Mr. Thatcher, who last visited Bermuda just over a month ago to take part in World AIDS Day activities, said the question of how drugs are paid for or who pays for them has special significance for people living with catastrophic illnesses for several reasons, including: The newest treatments tend to be very expensive; People with catastrophic illnesses need many more drugs than the average person; Many new drugs have not cleared the federal licensing process so are not covered under private plans; Private insurers in Ontario are allowed to exclude employees from their plans who have pre-existing medical problems that might turn out to be expensive; and The Ontario Drug Benefit Programme (ODB) has restrictive eligibility requirements. To get a drug card you must be over 65, on social assistance or so sick that you require homecare.

Recalling that Ontario's Health Minister last January unveiled a strategic plan looking at Ontario's health care system, Mr. Thatcher said: "A new bureaucracy was established in the Health Ministry called the Ontario Drug Programmes Reform Secretariat. They have spent their time researching, studying, briefing and consulting. So far, no new policies''.

He said two months after the advisory panel was created it came up with "an innovative, comprehensive and thorough catastrophic drug funding policy for AIDS''.

Last May the plan was sent to the Minister, her policy staff and the head of the Drug Programme Reform Secretariat. But, Mr. Thatcher said, "then it died''.

"For the next seven months, AIDS Action Now! regularly questioned the Minister's staff on the status of a catastrophic funding policy,'' he said. At the end, it became clear senior civil servants had not even read the report, he said.

"We were appalled. This is not just another bureaucratic horror story. The lack of a catastrophic funding policy has a real and critical impact on those of us living with these illnesses.'' Giving a personal example, Mr. Thatcher said: "After the international AIDS Conference in Amsterdam last summer, my doctor recommended I start a new treatment that was showing some promise against a virus known as Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and the broad family of Herpes viruses.

"The drug is Acyclovir. The dose was four grams per day and the cost was over $800 per month.

"I was already paying $370 per month just for one other drug that was supposed to help me put on weight. I couldn't afford the Acyclovir and had to take my chance with CMV.

"I am a person rapidly dying from AIDS. Specifically, lesions on the central nervous system. There are about 20 cancers or infections that could be causing these lesions. It has been confirmed that it is CMV that is making me blind.'' Mr. Thatcher's remarks were confirmed by a letter from his specialist Dr.

Anita Rachlis who has been involved in AIDS treatment for years and heads the HIV Clinic at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto who said many of her patients had to make treatment decisions based on their ability to pay.

"For any patient with a catastrophic illness, the solution would be the implementation of the long-promised catastrophic drug funding policy in the Province of Ontario.'' Mr. Thatcher said the Health Minister can also have the draft of the AIDS advisory panel's report "dusted off and fast tracked''.

"There is no reason why this programme should not be in place in six months,'' he said. "People living with AIDS can't afford to wait.'' Health Minister the Hon. Quinton Edness stressed that nobody in Bermuda is denied medical treatment.

"Government pays for medication for people who have AIDS,'' he said.

"But what we would like is for various forms of treatment to be insured. We are talking about how this can be achieved. We're talking about whether it should be included in the schedule as insurable and what it will cost the community.'' Mr. Edness said yesterday Government would also like to see insurance for addiction counselling.

"This is something that I've been interested in for years,'' he said. "The mechanisms, such as committees, to consider these things have been set up in the last three months.'' He said insuring treatment for AIDS was very much in the investigation stage.

"I hope that both of these things will be done within a reasonable time,'' he said, adding many of those conducting research on both issues -- in Government and the private sector -- were doing so on their own time.

He noted that founders of the Allan Vincent Smith Foundation, set up last year, were also looking at AIDS funding.

"I support their effort,'' Mr. Edness said, "and I expect they will be communicating with me.'' He noted that in most countries AIDS treatment is not insurable.