EMELIA SITHOLE, Johannesburg | Saturday
A COALITION of South African anti-Aids groups plans legal action to force the government to provide the nevirapine drug – which has been offered to the developing world for free – to prevent expectant mothers passing the virus to their babies.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said its hand had been forced by continual government delays and the refusal to accept a free offer by Boehringer Ingelheim, the German company that makes nevirapine under the name Viramune.
South Africa has one of the world’s fastest growing HIV-Aids epidemics with 1 700 new infections daily adding to 4.3 million people already infected with the virus out of a population of 43 million.
Up to 600 000 babies are born worldwide each year with the virus – 1 800 a day. Up to 90% of these cases are in the developing world and experts predict that without HIV drugs, child mortality rates in some African countries will double by the year 2010.
Drugs such as Glaxo Wellcome’s zidovudine, or AZT, have successfully reduced the number of women infecting their unborn children in industrialised countries, but the treatments are expensive and difficult to administer in poorer countries.
However, South African research presented to the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban in July showed that nevirapine – which is given to the mother during labour and to the child within 48 hours of delivery, was just as effective and much cheaper than AZT.
Boehringer Ingelheim said in July it would provide the drug to the developing world free for the next five years, but South African authorities have so far not taken up the offer, arguing that it lacks the infrastructure to effectively monitor such a programme.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) backed the TAC stance, criticising the government for its ambivalent attitude on antiviral drugs.
“Where treatment is clearly affordable, for instance in the case of drugs for mother-to-child transmission, government must provide it urgently,” it said.
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