JOHANNESBURG, Nov 1 (AFP) - A South African doctor has filed a complaint with the country's Human Rights Commission over statements by President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister that the anti-AIDS drug AZT could be dangerous.
Dr Costa Gazi, a public health administrator at a hospital in the east coast town of East London, accused Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang of being shortsighted in refusing to sanction the drug's use to combat South Africa's spiralling AIDS problem.
Their comments "made it clear that there is no way they will ever admit that the anti-viral drugs will be affordable, in their myopic view," he wrote in his letter to the commission.
Mbeki last week in an address to the lower house of parliament defended his government's stance, saying it it would be "irresponsible" to sanction the drug as its efficacy was unproven.
He said there was also a substantial amount of scientific literature which warned that the drug was toxic. Tshabalala-Msimang later backed his statements.
Gazi said they were flying in the face of the policies of the World Health Organisation which three years ago sanctioned the use of the drug to reduce the transmission of the HIV virus from infected mothers to their babies.
He said AZT had been "clearly and scientifically" proven to protect about 50 percent of babies born to HIV-positive mothers from infection.
"It is clear that all we are getting is delay after delay, excuse after excuse, which in their entirety merely destroy the human rights of poor women's babies," he said.
He also contested Tshabalala-Msimang claim that the drug was too expensive, saying it was more costly to treat a baby with AIDS than to prevent mother-to-child transmission through AZT.
There has in recent years been increasing pressure on the South African government to make the drug available to AIDS patients, rape survirvors and HIV positive pregnant women.
Some 3.6 million South Africans -- one in 11 -- are HIV positive, according to government figures released in July.
Mbeki's comments last week drew fire from pharmaceutical multinational Glaxo Wellcome which makes AZT. It said the president was "misinformed" about the safety of the drug.
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