South Africa AIDS Groups Go to Court Over Nevirapine (Reuters Health)
Originally published by Reuters Health, November 19, 2001
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — AIDS activists in South Africa said on Monday they were pressing ahead with a court case to force the government to supply a drug that reduces the risk of vertical HIV transmission.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) wants the antiretroviral drug nevirapine to be made available to pregnant women nationwide. The South African government has balked at the use of nevirapine and other antiretroviral drugs, such as AZT, in public hospitals, claiming the drugs are too expensive and toxic.
The South African Health Department has set up pilot projects in 200 hospitals and clinics to assess the value of nevirapine in reducing the risk of maternal-infant HIV transmission.
TAC chairman Zackie Achmat said his organization and other groups lobbying on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS were taking the National Department of Health and health ministers from eight of the country's nine provinces to court on grounds they were violating HIV-infected subjects' constitutional right to life and to healthcare.
Achmat told reporters the case would begin in Pretoria on Monday. "We're very confident that, if not in this round, then in the end we will win the court case," he said.
Achmat said the groups had settled with the government of the Western Cape Province, which includes Cape Town, where all pregnant women are offered nevirapine during delivery.
President Thabo Mbeki, who has yet to acknowledge a causal link between HIV and AIDS, has said antiretrovirals are as dangerous as the disease they treat. But the activists' case has won the backing of the World Health Organization which said it would provide written evidence and make experts available if required, Achmat said.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang reaffirmed in a radio interview on Monday that South Africa could not afford antiretroviral therapy, but said this did not mean the government was not helping those with HIV and AIDS.
"It is common knowledge that the antiretrovirals for this country are extremely costly," Tshabalala-Msimang said. "The budget I have for medicines generally is 2 billion rand [$207 million] and therefore, if I was going to spend all that money on antiretrovirals, what then do I do about other patients," she said.
The activists argue South Africa needs a common policy for the public and private sectors to ensure all doctors treat HIV/AIDS according to best international standards and avoid errors that could fuel the development of resistant strains of the virus.
