PRETORIA, Dec 14 (AFP) - The Pretoria High Court on Friday ordered the South African government to give a key drug to HIV-positive pregnant women across the country, to help protect their unborn babies.
The court upheld the first major challenge to official policy on treatment of AIDS in South Africa, in what was seen a sharp rebuke to a government which has failed to stem the pandemic.
Health officials had argued that treatment with the drug Nevirapine was impracticable, given the cost and scale of the problem since an estimated 25 percent of pregnant women are infected by the human immunodeficiency virus.
In a landmark ruling, Judge Chris Botha ordered the government "to make Nevirapine available to pregnant women with HIV who give birth in the public health sector".
An estimated 70,000 to 100,000 babies are infected with HIV every year.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a non-governmental organisation and one of the applicants in the case against the government, had argued in court that Nevirapine could reduce by half the rate of HIV mother-to-child tranmission.
Currently a Nevirapine test programme, run in 18 public health pilot sites nationwide, reaches some 10,000 pregnant women.
The government was not represented in court and by early afternoon had not commented on the judgment.
Manny da Camara, spokesman for the opposition Democratic Alliance, said: "It is the most powerful statement yet of the harmfulness of the government's AIDS policies."
The giant Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African communist party, government allies, welcomed the judgment.
Botha granted the applicants -- AIDS activists the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a paediatrician in the public health service Dr Haroon Saloojee and the Children's Rights Centre -- their application with costs.
He ordered the government to make Nevirapine available at all public institutions where it is medically indicated for HIVipositive pregnant women with appropriate testing and counselling.
In what was seen as a stern rebuke to the government, he also ordered health authorities to present a comprehensive programme to reduce or prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission to the court by March 31.
"We have made history today" said TAC spokesman, Mark Heywood.
Children's Rights Centre director Cati Vawala called the judgment a "victory for democracy".
"We have had a medical apartheid in the past and now we have the tools to fight and this allows us to meet our obligations to childrens' right to life and to health care," she said.
The applicants appealed to government not to challenge the court ruling.
Defending their position during the hearing, health authorities had argued they lacked resources to roll out a Nevirapine national programme and that a cautious approach was needed when introducing such a "potent drug".
The government has not yet taken up an offer by the German pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim to provide Nevarapine free of charge.
Heywood said the TAC would continue to put pressure on the government in a bid to make anti-retroviral treatment widely available to some 4.7 million South Africans infected with HIV, out of an overall population of about 44 million.
Eight months ago, TAC was an ally of government in its legal confrontation with pharmaceutical companies over access to affordable drugs.
President Thabo Mbeki and health authorities have incurred criticism for apparently failing to recognise the magnitude of a problem that could devastate the population.
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