South Africa’s first national Aids conference opened yesterday with a withering attack on the government for its decision to restrict the use of a key drug.
Medical experts and Aids activists voiced outrage at indications from the authorities that they may limit the use of nevirapine, an anti-retroviral drug credited with saving the lives of thousands of infants born to HIV-infected mothers.
”I really am left breathless by the decision … to question the validity of the scientific results around nevirapine,” said the conference chairman, Dr Jerry Coovadia.
”The Aids epidemic has been bedevilled by unscientific, irrational, unreasonable and downright perverse attitudes.”
South Africa has more people living with HIV than any other country in the world, with almost 5 million people out of a population of 44 million infected with the virus.
But government officials are sceptical about the use of anti-retroviral drugs like nevirapine, arguing that they can be toxic, expensive and difficult to take.
Last week, the medicines control council, a state regulator, said it would withdraw approval for the drug unless the manufacturer, the German drug giant Boehringer-Ingelheim, presented evidence within 90 days of its effectiveness. The council is dissatisfied with Ugandan trials on which the drug’s registration was based.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the country’s largest Aids activist group, concluded its own congress yesterday. Delegates vowed to resume a campaign of civil disobedience to compel the government to use anti-retrovirals.
The TAC won a court ruling last year forcing the government to use nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission of Aids. The group is planning street protests and other action.
”We will be marching, that is for sure,” said a TAC spokesperson, Desmond Mpofu. – Guardian Unlimited Â