InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 28 January 1997.
Gumisai Mutume

Three University of Pretoria scientists declared last week that they had developed a new, affordable drug, Virodene P058, which lowers the count of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the body.

Their claim raised an immediate furor within the medical fraternity and, according to the National AIDS Convention of South Africa (NACOSA), the sensational coverage of the controversial AIDS drug has given South Africa's estimated two million HIV population false hopes of a cure.

NACOSA is an umbrella body for South African non-governmental organizations working on HIV/AIDS.

According to NACOSA, people living with HIV also have had their expectations unrealistically raised for an immediate and affordable treatment. The scientists claimed that Virodene P058 cost about $35.

"AIDS education and prevention work have been sidelined by the sensational presentation to the cabinet and the accompanying media coverage," says NACOSA in a statement.

The three researchers, who were seeking some $800,000 U.S. the government to complete their work, last week took some of their patients to a cabinet meeting where they announced their findings.

Their claim and the subsequent heated debated led to a decision by the researchers, the ethics committee of the University of Pretoria, and South Africa's Medicines Control Council (MCC) to suspend human trials of Virodene.

The MCC said in a statement issued on Jan. 24 that no further patients would be studied and all treatment would be stopped until MCC and the ethics committee had studied all available information on Virodene's effects on patients and international literature and safety issues regarding the drug.

South Africa's national program to combat HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and its AIDS education and awareness campaign, have long been hampered by a shortage of funds and alleged corruption.

Last year, the AIDS campaign was embroiled in a $3 million scandal arising from the mismanagement of funding from the European Union for a play on AIDS. The play was put on by relatives of the same Cabinet minister who brought the three researchers to the Cabinet meeting.

In 1994, when the new democratic government came to power, the HIV/STD program was revamped and given a tiny annual budget of $4.5 million, far less than the $57 million a year budget NACOSA had recommended to deal with the AIDS pandemic.

According to future projections made by Southern Life Insurance in 1995, the government will spend 30 percent of the total health budget by 2010 on AIDS-related costs.

But on South Africa's streets, the hundreds of billboards that are supposed to be delivering powerful AIDS awareness and prevention messages are conspicuous by their absence.

Two years ago, the AIDS program of the National Progressive Primary Health Care Network collapsed due to a lack of funding. According to Michel Worsnip, the program's coordinator, this was the only national AIDS work being done at the level of communities.

The latest controversy on a purported AIDS cure, experts say, is another indicator of lack of coordination in the country's efforts to deal with the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The three University of Pretoria scientists spent some $174,000 of their own money on the Virodene research.

Olga Visser, one of the developers of Virodene, says that their research has now become bogged down in squabbles over the authenticity of their claims.

"Our aim is to help the millions of poor people in Africa and developing countries who can not afford the drugs that are currently on the market," says Visser. Some of the AIDS drugs used can cost as much as 4,000 rands (about $870) a month.

The researchers say they have tested the drug over the last six months on 10 volunteers.

But South Africa's medical fraternity is up in arms, arguing that the team broke all the rules in the book. Instead of announcing their findings at a forum of medical experts or in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, they chose the mass media. Also, Virodene has not been further tested within medical circles.

Visser says, however, that once the MCC concludes its review by early February the researchers intend to carry on with their work, and that they plan to have Virodene on the shelves by the turn of the century.

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