Johannesburg | Wednesday
THE government will appeal the latest Pretoria High Court judgement ordering them to provide nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Wednesday.
She made the announcement at the national traditional leaders forum on HIV/Aids in Johannesburg, saying the government intended to appeal Monday’s high court ruling in the Constitutional Court.
Tshabalala-Msimang said she respected the court’s ruling, but that she wanted to consider other legal options.
She said a judge was not in a position to prescribe medicine: ”It is us (the medical community) who can do so.”
”I’m prepared to abide by the law but my conviction is that women of this country deserve the best,” Tshabalala-Msimang said.
The government was currently dispensing the antiretroviral drug at 18 pilot sites country-wide.
Aids drug proponents, including the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), this week won a court battle compelling the government to make the drug available at all public hospitals country-wide with the capacity to do so.
Earlier on Wednesday, South African Justice Minister Penuell Maduna apologised after he said that the Pretoria High Court judgement on nevirapine supply was not binding in other provinces.
His comments were slammed by legal experts who said the court’s decision that nevirapine should be made available to HIV-positive pregnant women is binding on all the provincial MECs cited in the case.
He later said government would never refuse to implement a judgement of a South African court.
”We will implement all of them, even those court judgements that cause us some concerns,” he said at the official opening of the revamped magistrate’s court in Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Town.
Maduna was referring to a comment on Sunday by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s that started the furore. She said that government would not abide by a recent court ruling on the provision of Aids drugs.
The Pretoria High Court this week granted an application by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) that nevirapine be provided to pregnant women by state hospitals with the capacity to do so, despite an appeal by the state against an earlier similar ruling.
On Wednesday Maduna said a strong and well-resourced judiciary was in the best interests of any democracy and the state would always provide the necessary support.
However, this did not mean that government would not criticise when it felt criticism was due.
”But as I say so, as human beings and as people, we shall never desist from criticising when criticism is legitimate and we know that the judges will appreciate that,” he said.
Maduna said government was, after all, a person of the law and would reserve the right to all remedies available to litigants in terms of the law.
”We owe it to the people of South Africa to do so, so that indeed there is clarity on all the contentious and controversial matters,” he said.
The judiciary was the only constitutionally established institution that could say with certainty ”which way things ought to go”.
It was the only institution that could say what the law was, even when there were problems of interpretation, Maduna said. – Sapa