[Ip-health] News: South Africa to Get Key AIDS Drug (AP)

[Kate Krauss]

Tuesday January 22 9:05 AM ET

South Africa to Get Key AIDS Drug


DURBAN, South Africa (AP) - A key AIDS drug, which reduces the chances of
HIV-positive pregnant mothers transmitting the virus to their children at
birth, is to be made available in South Africa's most AIDS stricken
province, an official said Monday.

The decision to make the drug nevirapine available at public hospitals in
the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, which is controlled by the Zulu
nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party, runs counter to a national health
department directive restricting the drug's use to a few pilot sites.

Nevirapine is approved by the World Health Organization, and studies show i=
t
can reduce the rate of mother-to-child HIV infections by up to 50 percent.
But the South African government maintains its safety remains unproven and
inadequate structures are in place to administer it.

KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali said he took the decision to make
nevirapine available on principle, because it was ``a pregnant woman's
prerogative to save her child from contracting the AIDS virus,'' the South
African Press Association reported.

Government studies indicate more than one in three people in KwaZulu-Natal
are HIV positive.=20

KwaZulu-Natal is the second provinces to make nevirapine available in publi=
c
hospitals. In 2000 health officials begandistributing the drug in the
Western Cape, which was then controlled by the main opposition, the
Democratic Alliance.

The African National Congress, which rules nationally, has since entered
into an alliance which controls the Western Cape. It controls the country's
other seven provinces outright.

Health budget allocations are controlled at provincial level.

Last year AIDS activists won a lawsuit forcing the government to make
nevirapine available at hospitals countrywide, but the government is
appealing the ruling.

Mtshali said his province had an obligation to supply AIDS drugs to pregnan=
t
mothers.=20

``A mother who is already afflicted by an incurable disease should not have
to contend with a hopeless situation of her unborn child facing the same
affliction if it can be prevented,'' he said.

An estimated 4.7 million South Africans - one in nine - is HIV positive,
more than any other country in the world, and the government has come under
fire for its haphazard approach toward combatting the disease.

President Thabo Mbeki has questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, saying
poverty and malnutrition are also responsible for the epidemic's spread.

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