Johannesburg | Monday
SOUTH President Thabo Mbeki on Sunday hinted that he might extend anti-retroviral drug treatment for HIV-positive pregnant women beyond the current limited number of test sites.
When asked by SABC public television about the risks of a prolonged testing period for the anti-retroviral drug nevirapine, now used at 18 pilot sites, Mbeki said he would ”not necessarily” wait for problems to be resolved at those sites before extending the program.
”I am quite sure that what the minister of health will decide will be that, in the instance that in one area where we are ready to move, then let us move,” Mbeki said.
”I don’t think they would say, let us wait for the slowest. They would have to say let us make sure that the slowest catches up with the rest,” he added, referring to the pilot sites.
Mbeki has long been under fire for questioning the link between HIV and Aids in a nation where an estimated 4,7-million South Africans, one in nine, are infected with the HI virus.
His comments marked the second time in recent days that the head of state hinted at a possible extension of the drug therapy program, which the government has previously seemed to rule out before reviewing test sites.
Treatment action campaigners argue that 25% of pregnant mothers are HIV-positive and in December won a court bid to force the government to extend its current nvirapine test programme as widely as possible.
Doctors have openly defied government policy by providing anti-retrovirals outside the scope of the program, but the national health ministry has been waiting on figures from the pilot sites and lodged an appeal against the court order compelling it to move faster.
Some 70 000 babies are born HIV-positive in South Africa every year.
The government has rejected calls for wider use of the drug, saying its effectiveness was unproven and means of distributing the drug were inadequate.
”The matter is not merely the dispensing of a drug,” Mbeki said Sunday, noting that beyond providing nevirapine to pregnant women, the women had to be told not to breast feed their children to avoid spreading the virus.
”That’s one of the issues we have to address: what capacities do we have to assist poor women, who don’t have enough food for themselves to eat, to ensure that they then are able to access the necessary food for this infant?” he said.
Meanwhile, the National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS (Napwa) on Sunday called on the government to give social grants to all people infected with HIV.
”Whilst we acknowledge the role of anti-retrovirals in prolonging and saving lives of people living with HIV/Aids, Napwa Free State finds that many the deaths are mainly due to underdevelopment and low socio-economic status of many of our communities and Napwa members respectively,” it said.
Napwa made the call at the end of a three-day provincial congress in Bloemfontein.
Representative Thanduxolo Doro said the organisation would embark on a drive to call on the government to give people living with Aids social grants.
He said poverty contributed to deaths of people living with Aids because they could not afford to buy nutritious food.
Doro said Napwa noted with concern that the matter of lowering the drug prices was still under discussion — as President Thabo Mbeki said during his state-of-the-nation address on Friday.
Napwa felt that the issue was not treated with the urgency it deserved.
”We therefore call on our government to begin a process of parallel importation of generic HIV/Aids medication or better still, to facilitate the production of these drugs within South Africa,” he said. – Sapa