Free State health MEC Auma Tsopo on Friday announced that nevirapine for pregnant women and rapid test kits were now available at all hospitals and health complexes in the province.
Tsopo was speaking at Jagersfontein Hospital which is one of the hospitals which will begin to implement a programme of preventing mother to child transmission of Aids/HIV.
The other hospitals are Elizabeth Ross and Botshabelo.
”Following the court order that nevirapine should be made available in all health facilities in the country, in the Free State we have moved fast to implement the order.
”Through this implementation we aim to save the lives of the innocent babies whose parents or mothers are unfortunately infected by this deadly virus,” she said.
To roll out the programme throughout the province had cost R44-million.
”It must be stressed that the full impact of the PMTCT interventions on babies who test HIV positive after birth cannot be fully measured at this stage for a number of reasons that I cannot go into here,” Tsopo said. – Sapa