Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Sunday, October 11, 1998
The policy was announced on Friday by Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma, who said the $14 million appropriated for the government's new campaign to raise AIDS awareness would be better spent on public education.
Doctors complained that the decision shut down five pilot projects that were to treat HIV-positive expectant mothers in the last month of pregnancy with AZT, a drug that reportedly can reduce by half the transmission rate of HIV to newborns.
"Here's a real way we can prevent transmission and the government is not intervening," Glenda Gray, director of an HIV research unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, was quoted as saying. Baragwanath serves the black township of Soweto outside of Johannesburg.
Treatment was estimated to cost up to $131 per patient. Up to 200 babies are born each day in South Africa who test positive for HIV, and many are abandoned by their families.
Zuma said a large number of women would have to be treated to save a small number of babies. Without treatment, up to 46 percent of HIV-positive mothers pass the virus to their babies, the newspaper said.
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