FIENIE GROBLER, Johannesburg | Monday
ALL public hospitals in Gauteng will provide the anti-retroviral drug nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women this year, premier Mbhazima Shilowa said on Monday in a speech prepared for the Gauteng legislature.
Shilowa said: ”During the next financial year, we will ensure that all public hospitals and our large community health centres provide nevirapine for the prevention of mother to child transmission.”
The programme for HIV-positive pregnant women would be launched within the next 100 days at several hospitals, including Pretoria Academic, Yusuf Dadoo in Krugersdorp, Far East Rand, Tembisa, Pholosong, and Edenvale.
”Our long term objective is to make it possible for pregnant women throughout Gauteng to access the full package of care within a reasonable distance from their homes.
”An amount of R30-million will be made available to back our words with action,” Shilowa said.
Gauteng on Monday became the fourth province to announce an extension in its HIV and Aids programme.
It is also the first African National Congress-governed province to announce full provision of the drug at provincial hospitals.
Meanwhile, government’s Aids policy is expected to come under scrutiny on Monday at an African National Congress meeting attended by both president Thabo Mbeki and the increasingly critical Nelson Mandela.
Mandela, a former leader of the ANC, and ex-officio member of all current leadership structures, has been increasingly outspoken in recent weeks on government’s policy on Aids.
He told the Sunday Times that the debate on HIV/Aids should end and that the government and South Africans should focus on fighting the ”war” against the disease.
In an interview with the newspaper this week, Mandela issued his strongest attack so far on the government’s lack of urgency in the fight against Aids.
”This is a war. It has killed more people than has been the case in all previous wars and in all previous natural disasters. We must not continue to be debating, to be arguing, when people are dying.”
The report said that while stopping short of directly criticising President Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress, Mandela said he was talking to the ruling party about its position on Aids and believed it would listen to sound advice.
Mandela admitted that differences over Aids and the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to pregnant women had resulted in a cooling in relations between himself and the ANC’s senior leadership.
”I have got difficulties on questions of this nature (the government’s stance on Aids). This is why I am meeting the ANC, so that we can sort out our differences…”
South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign says 25% of pregnant mothers in South Africa are HIV-positive, and that some 70 000 babies are born HIV-positive every year. – Sapa