Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, April 18, 1999
Andre Jurgens
"The minister is condemning thousands of children to death by refusing to make the drug AZT available to their mothers in state hospitals," said the Pan Africanist Congress's national secretary for health and welfare, Dr Costa Gazi.
The PAC would be challenging Zuma's controversial policy decision in the High Court within the next two weeks, MP Patricia de Lille said.
Medical research has shown the drug cuts the transmission rate of HIV to babies by half if their mothers are given it late in pregnancy.
Zuma dropped a bombshell in October last year when she announced that the government would not give pregnant HIV-positive women the drug - also known as zidovudine.
"It [AZT] is not cost-effective because we don't have the money," said Zuma at the time.
"What will work is when people take precautions and babies are saved because men and women are using condoms."
Gazi, who is also head of public health at Ceclia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane, East London, said numerous appeals from doctors to the minister to reverse her policy decision had been unsuccessful.
"It is morally indefensible to deny this treatment to children. We have no alternative but to get the courts to change her mind," he said.
"It is far cheaper to treat mothers with AZT than to treat seriously ill children when they develop AIDS."
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