STEVEN SWINDELLS, Johannesburg | Wednesday
SOUTH Africa’s top medical body has approved the use of a combination anti-Aids drug which contains the drug AZT – but despite the endorsement, AZT will still not be available in the public sector other than for health workers who are occupationally at risk of becoming HIV-positive.
The regulatory Medicines Control Council (MCC) approved and registered the anti-retroviral drug Combivir, a mix of zidovudine (AZT) and lamivudine (3TC), earlier this month. It will be available in pharmacies next week, says British drug giant Glaxo Wellcome.
It was the first reaffirmation of the efficacy of AZT compounds by an official medical body since President Thabo Mbeki sparked worldwide controversy by questioning the widely held belief that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes Aids and appointing so-called ”Aids dissidents” to his advisory panel on the disease.
”It’s a strong endorsement by a respectable body…The MCC doesn’t have a problem with the efficacy of the drug. It invalidates what was said,” said Dr Peter Moore, Medical Director of Glaxo Wellcome South Africa.
Mbeki was caught in a firestorm of international scientific and diplomatic criticism after casting doubt on AZT and denying it to pregnant women and rape victims in the financially over-stretched public health system.
Although South Africa is at the epicentre of the global Aids crisis – 4.2 million or one in 10 South Africans are HIV-positive – AZT has been officially available only in the private sector since its local registration 11 years ago.
Negotiations between South African authorities and Glaxo to register Combivir, already available throughout Europe and the United States, took one month short of three years.
Pretoria has extended trials of the drug nevirapine in the fight against mother-to-child transmission of HIV-Aids but envisages a limited role for anti-retrovirals in public health policy.
AZT is currently used by around 3 000 South Africans who are either HIV-positive, pregnant or health workers since it was registered in 1989.
Business has also moved to offer AZT despite the government’s strong stance against the drug, which emerged as the first anti-Aids drug when the US Food and Drug Administration approved it in 1987.
The country’s largest supermarket chain Pick & Pay last month offered AZT to its 30000 employees, the first such move by a major private South African firm. – Reuters