South African Court Allows Government to Appeal AIDS Ruling (Reuters Health)
Originally published by Reuters Health, March 11, 2002
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — A South African judge said on Monday the government could appeal a court ruling compelling it to give pregnant women antiretroviral agents that reduce the risk of vertical HIV transmission.
But Judge Chris Botha also said the government must provide the antiretroviral drug nevirapine to any woman who wants it while its appeal to the Constitutional Court is pending, a government spokesman and anti-AIDS groups told Reuters.
AIDS activists welcomed Botha's order for temporary relief, saying it would save scores of lives in the country, which has more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other.
"The judge put the morality back into politics by ordering that in the interim, where doctors have the capacity, they have the right to provide it to any woman who wants it," Zachie Achmat, chairman of AIDS group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), said. "This is a major step forward, because it puts people's lives first."
A spokesman for the government, which has earned widespread condemnation for refusing to expand a nevirapine pilot programme to all pregnant women on cost and safety grounds, said Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang had no immediate comment.
The Pretoria High Court ruled in December that the government had a constitutional duty to widen access to nevirapine, which has been shown to cut mother-to-child HIV transmission rates by up to 50%.
A spokesman for the TAC, which launched the original court action, said 10 lives could be saved every day if the government implemented Botha's ruling immediately.
Germany's Boehringer Ingelheim, which makes the drug, has offered to provide it free of charge to South Africa for 5 years.
Criticism at home of the government's AIDS policy is escalating, with former South African President Nelson Mandela saying last week people would die "in scores every day" if Pretoria continued to block the distribution of antiretroviral drugs.
No date has been set for the government's appeal.
