Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia - Tuesday October 10, 2000
Jeremy Lovell
The drugs are being offered through Parmed, the parliamentary medical aid scheme, which gives comprehensive health coverage to all national and provincial members of parliament as well as judges and President Thabo Mbeki himself.
"This scheme covers all the things that ordinary citizens who can't afford to get antiretroviral drugs privately are denied," Democratic Party spokesman Ryan Coetzee told Reuters on Monday.
It flies in the face of the government's consistent refusal to give antiretroviral drugs to rape victims and Mbeki's own position that the toxicity of antiretrovirals make them too dangerous to give to pregnant women.
No one from Parmed was available for comment on the revelations.
Antiretroviral drugs such as Glaxo-Wellcome's AZT slow the progression of AIDS and are credited with reducing the risk of HIV in rape victims and reducing mother-to-child transmission in pregnant women. The government covers two-thirds of the monthly subscriptions to the scheme which includes a special "aid for AIDS" section offering full courses of antiretroviral drugs for rape survivors and HIV-infected pregnant women.
Coetzee said so far 68 of Parmed's 2,000 members had signed up for the special anti-HIV scheme--which extends to partners and dependents.
He stressed it would be wrong to induce from the uptake of the AIDS scheme that 68 parliamentarians were carrying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Mbeki himself has questioned whether HIV causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), arguing in parliament last month that a virus in itself could not cause a syndrome.
He also wrote in an exchange of letters with DP leader Tony Leon published last week that to promote the use of drugs such as AZT for rape victims would be breaking South African law as the drugs had not been registered for that use.
In the letters Mbeki said there was no scientific proof that antiretrovirals prevented HIV infection or transmission, and he accused the drug companies of trying to profit from the misery of Africans and Leon of fronting for them.
The National Assembly is due to hold a snap debate on Tuesday, sponsored by the Democratic Party, on the causes of HIV and methods of treatment.
The country is at the epicenter of a global AIDS epidemic that experts agree poses one of the biggest threats to the future of the national economy.
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