Johannesburg | Tuesday
FORMER South African president Nelson Mandela said Monday he was relieved the South African government had changed its Aids policy, after it announced it would provide the anti-retroviral drug nevirapine to rape victims.
The government at present supplies nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women and their newborn babies to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
“These are responsible people who could not allow babies to continue to die,” Mandela said in Soweto, a Johannesburg township, where he accepted a donation from an international pharmaceutical company.
South Africa has the world’s greatest number of HIV-positive citizens — around five million — and some 70 000 babies are born with the virus every year.
Aventis Pharma on Monday donated about 15 million euros (about $13-million) to the Nelson Mandela Foundation to combat tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa, where about 50% of TB patients are also infected with HIV/Aids.
Aventis Pharma chief executive Richard Markham said the donation, over a five-year period, aimed to increase TB case detection rates and patient cure rates. The company will build one TB centres in each of South Africa’s nine provinces.
South Africa is ranked ninth out of the 22 countries which account for 80% of the two billion people infected with TB.
Mandela, who was diagnosed with TB when he was a political prisoner, said: “People must take the treatment that is given to them.” – AFP