Government Says Women Have No Right to Drug
By Dina Kraft
Originally published by The Associated Press, November 27, 2001
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Pregnant HIV-positive women have no inherent right to a key AIDS drug that could save their babies from the deadly disease, lawyers for the South African government argued Tuesday.
AIDS activists and pediatricians have sued the state in a bid to force it to make the drug nevirapine available to HIV-positive expectant mothers nationwide.
Some 200 babies are born HIV-positive every day in South Africa, and studies show nevirapine can reduce the transmission of the virus from mother to child during labor by up to 50 percent. The government argues that the drug's safety remains unproven, and that inadequate backup systems are in place to administer it.
"There is a right to health care services, there is no right to nevirapine," attorney Moene Moerane said in summing up the government's argument on the second and final day of the lawsuit in the Pretoria High Court. A judgment was expected by the end of December.
The German drug company Boehringer Ingelheim has offered nevirapine free to developing countries. South Africa has yet to accept the offer, although it is testing the drug at 18 pilot sites.
Watching the proceedings was Sarah Halele, 30, an HIV-positive woman who gave birth four months ago. She was scheduled to receive nevirapine when she delivered at the hospital near her home, but when she went into premature labor while visiting relatives, the hospital where she gave birth did not have the drug.
"I was angry. I did not care about myself I was thinking about him (my son) and wanted to save him even if I was sick," Halele said. "It (the government) cheated my son."
Halele's son will be tested later for HIV, but his bouts of diarrhea and thrush—symptoms of the virus—worry her.
Moerane said the state did not have enough money to ensure the treatment was adequately followed up and so was not yet ready to make nevirapine available to all hospitals and clinics.
"(The state) cannot solve South Africa's woes overnight," he said.
AIDS activists lawyers argued that the government's policy was irrational and arbitrary and that it was deciding whether children would live or die.
Mark Heywood, secretary of the Treatment Action Campaign which filed the lawsuit, said the government was infringing on the rights of 90 percent of the country's pregnant HIV-positive women who currently do not have access to nevirapine.
"Their (the government) argument is contorted and frankly I think they are shameful because they are saying 'We reserve the right to withhold a lifesaving medicine,"' Heywood said.
