Cape Town | Wednesday
THE South African province worst afflicted by Aids must immediately make anti-retroviral drugs treatment available to all pregnant women, whatever their HIV status, Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi said on Tuesday.
Buthelezi said his Inkatha Freedom Party, which shares power in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal Province with the governing African National Congress, had told the provincial premier to start distributing anti-retroviral drugs immediately.
”The premier of KwaZulu-Natal has now instructed that henceforth health facilities in KwaZulu-Natal shall ensure that children are not born with a death sentence,” he told parliament, in an open split with cabinet colleagues.
Government policy has been to provide the drug nevirapine at 18 national test sites, but Buthelezi said that in KwaZulu-Natal — one of the most isolated and poorest provinces — the scheme should cover areas where HIV testing is impossible.
He told parliament that provincial Premier Lionel Mtshali has ordered that the drug be rolled out to curb mother-to-child transmission of HIV even in areas where testing and counselling pregnant women is difficult.
The government’s refusal to make nevirapine available beyond the clinics where they are conducting trials with the drug has been founded on frequently raised concerns about infrastructure and lack of proof as yet that the anti-retroviral works.
This line was taken again on Tuesday by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msisang, but Buthelezi indicated that he wanted to cut through the logistical problems cited by national health officials.
”Our nation is dying of HIV/Aids,… we cannot wait for months, if not years, to have an infrastructure which can determine the HIV status of women and provide them with the required counselling.”
Buthelezi said in 2001 that some 80 000 people died of Aids-related illnesses in KwaZulu-Natal, in the east of the country, and 40 000 babies were born HIV positive.
Mtshali last month rebelled against the government’s policy on nevirapine and announced that the drug would be distributed throughout the province, but did not mention that in some parts it would be done in the absence of HIV testing.
Buthelezi said that in such areas women could ”choose to opt out of the programme (only) by producing an HIV negative test result”.
KwaZulu-Natal is the second province in the country to extend anti-retroviral distribution beyond government test sites, following the lead several months ago of the Western Cape Province, where the opposition Democratic Alliance is in power.
According to government figures, some 70 000 babies are born HIV positive annually in South Africa as a result of mother-to-child transmission of the virus which afflicts one in nine people in the country.
Activists claims that at least 20 000 of these babies could escape infection if government were to provide nevirapine wherever possible. – Sapa