A total of about 7 000 women around the country had received the anti-retroviral drug nevirapine at state hospitals and clinics by December last year, according to South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
Replying to a question in Parliament from Democratic Alliance MP Mike Waters, the minister said the mother-to-child interventions ”have been available in most of the country since the constitutional court order of July 2002”.
Government was forced to provide the drug to prevent HIV transmission to their babies through court action by the Treatment Action Campaign.
The minister noted that the number of facilities implementing the interventions had rapidly increased.
She noted that there were 207 facilities offering the service in the Free State by May 2003 while there were 156 facilities offering the service from June this year in the Eastern Cape. In Gauteng there were just 53 facilities including community health care centres, hospitals and clinics offering the service as at last month while there were 30 facilities offering the service in the Northern Cape.
In KwaZulu Natal there were 283 facilities offering the service while there were just 50 facilities operating. The figures for Mpumalanga, North West and Limpopo were 39, 89 and 112 facilities respectively as at June this year.
The large discrepancy in the provision sites, particularly the low numbers in the populous province of Gauteng, was not explained by the minister.
Although Waters asked the minister about the breakdown of numbers using the
facilities at each site, these were not provided by the minister. – I-Net Bridge