Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Friday December 14, 2001
Dina Kraft, Associated Press Writer
The Pretoria High Court said the government not only must distribute the drug nevirapine to those women giving birth in public hospitals, but it also must institute a nationwide program to reduce mother-to-child transmissions of HIV. Nearly one of every four expectant mothers in South Africa test positive for the virus that causes AIDS.
Some 200 babies are born HIV-positive every day in South Africa, and studies show nevirapine can reduce transmission of the virus during labor by up to 50 percent.
The government argued that the drug remained unproven.
"About one thing there must be no misunderstanding: a countrywide MTCT (mother-to-child transmission) prevention program is an ineluctable obligation of the State," Pretoria High Court Judge Chris Botha wrote.
He gave the government until March 31 to report back on how the program - to include counseling, HIV testing, and the distribution of baby formula - was being implemented.
AIDS activists cheered the landmark decision, saying it might pave the way for making other AIDS drugs more widely available to infected adults.
"We've made history today," said Mark Heywood, secretary of the Treatment Action Campaign, the AIDS activist group that filed the lawsuit with a group of pediatricians.
The South African Broadcasting Corp. said the government would comment next week after studying the judgment. An appeal is available.
The lawsuit was the first major legal challenge to the government's policy on AIDS medication.
More than 4.7 million South Africans, 11 percent of the population, are HIV positive, and a recent study found that it was the leading cause of death for adults last year.
German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim has offered to distribute nevirapine to developing countries for free.
The drug is recommended by the World Health Organization, but the South African government argued that its safety was unproven and so it restricted its distribution to a handful of pilot sites.
Botha said that restriction was "unreasonable."
AIDS activists question whether there is a connection between the sluggish pace of the government's AIDS prevention program and President Thabo Mbeki's doubting of the link between HIV and AIDS.
Dr. Haron Saloojee, one of the pediatricians who filed the lawsuit, called the verdict "a special Christmas present" that potentially could save the lives of 50,000 babies next year.
"We have been shackled for too long by the restraints of our policy makers," he said.
Outside the courthouse, 30-year-old Sarah Halele, an HIV-positive woman, held her 4-month-old son, Kgotso.
Halele testified she was scheduled to receive nevirapine when she delivered at the hospital near her home, but she went into premature labor near another hospital that did not have the drug.
Halele's son has not been tested for HIV but he has been repeatedly ill.
"I'm happy because the children are going to be saved," Halele said. She then took her son to the hospital.
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