SOUTH AFRICA: South African Ruling Party Makes Sharp Attack on US Health Officials for Promoting AIDS Drug in Africa

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

SOUTH AFRICA: South African Ruling Party Makes Sharp Attack on US Health Officials for Promoting AIDS Drug in Africa

Associated Press (12.17.04) - Monday, December 20, 2004
Alexandra Zavis

On Friday, ANC Today - the online journal of South Africa's ruling party - criticized US health officials, whom it accused of lying to promote a key AIDS drug and treating Africans like "guinea pigs." The article was a response to AP reports showing that prior to President Bush's 2002 launch of a plan to distribute nevirapine in Africa, Dr. Edmund Tramont, chief of the National Institutes of Health's AIDS Division, rewrote an NIH report to omit negative conclusions about US-funded nevirapine research in Uganda and ordered the research restarted over his staff's objections.

US health officials "entered into a conspiracy with a pharmaceutical company to tell lies to promote the sales of nevirapine in Africa, with absolutely no consideration of the health impact of those lies on the lives of millions of Africans," the article alleged. African National Congress spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama, the journal's editor, said the unsigned opinion piece did not reflect official party policy.

South African activists have accused the nation's Health Department and the ANC of putting out misleading statements that may frighten patients away from treatment, and they worry that the government may now halt the use of single-dose nevirapine before alternative treatments are available. Studies have shown a single dose of the drug given to an infected woman in labor and another dose given to her newborn can reduce the chance of HIV transmission by up to 50 percent.

"NIH may be guilty of a cover up of bad [research] protocols, in which case we would be the first to want them held accountable," said Treatment Action Campaign leader Zackie Achmat, who accused President Thabo Mbeki of hiding behind the anonymous journal article. "But there is no doubt in my mind about the safety of nevirapine."

Dr. H. Clifford Lane, one of Tramont's supervisors, said an internal review had cleared Tramont of scientific misconduct. Tramont changed the report because he was more experienced than his safety exerts, Lane said. Tramont argued that Africans in the midst of an HIV/AIDS crisis deserved some leniency in meeting tough US safety standards.
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