Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - Tuesday, April 16, 2002
In a statement published in the latest edition of the South African Medical Journal, they say doctors have a moral duty to prescribe the drugs.
The government is currently challenging a High Court order won by Aids activists that will force it to give the drugs to HIV-positive women who want to minimise the chances of their infants being infected during birth.
The six doctors who put their names to the SAMJ statement include Professor Louis-Jacques van Bogaert, chief gynaecologist at Mpumalanga's Philadelphia Hospital.
Eighty doctors, nurses and support staff at Philadelphia earlier this month announced they would provide nevirapine to pregnant women regardless of the province's policy on the issue.
The superintendent of another Mpumalanga hospital was earlier axed for allowing an anti-rape NGO to supply antiretroviral drugs to rape survivors at the hospital.
The six said in the statement that doctors should not keep silent while their colleagues were disciplined by the authorities for placing the best interests of their patients above those of others.
It was a fact that many health care workers who spoke out against the grave injustices in the apartheid system were abused.
"We will not accept history repeating itself," they said.
"More than a decade after the official end of apartheid, we wonder how some of our colleagues became involved in atrocities.
"Was it cowardice or complicity? Over and over we say 'never again'."
If the state was allowed to dictate particular policies, like in the antiretroviral debate, it shackled the "fundamental principles of medical ethics" and opened the door to possible greater human rights abuses.
The other five signatories of the SAMJ statement were Dr Donna Knapp van Bogaert, bioethics lecturer at Medunsa; Dr Ames Dhai, senior consultant in obstetrics at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban; Prof Graham Howarth of the departments of obstetrics, gynaecology and bioethics at the University of Pretoria; David Hanekom, assistant professor of medicine at the University of North Dakota; and Prof Ghoyga Ogunbanjo, of Medunsa's department of family medicine.- Sapa
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