Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 47 603 380 as of 10.45am on Thursday July 11 2002.
A United States newspaper quoted Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang this week as saying that the drugs used to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child are poisonous.
“I’m forced to poison my people,” Tshabalala-Msimang reportedly told Newsday.
The newspaper said she would only make nevirapine available because she was forced to do so by the Constitutional Court.
Tshabalala-Msimang said she had been misquoted. She said the only concern she had raised with the reporter was that the government had not been able to establish from the US Food and Drug Administration why the application for registration of nevirapine had been withdrawn in the US.
Treatments priced beyond Africa: Drug companies at the international Aids conference in Barcelona on Tuesday announced progress in developing innovative Aids therapies, but the good news is not meant for Africa.
Most of the sophisticated new treatments will be priced out of the reach of developing countries, where 95% of those infected with the virus live. At about $10 000 to $12 000 a year, some of the more promising drugs will be completely out of the reach of Africans, most of whom live on far less than a dollar a day.