Wall Street Journal - August 22, 2001
Robert Block, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
The AIDS activists who championed South Africa in its landmark court battle against the pharmaceutical giants earlier this year said they plan to take the government of President Thabo Mbeki to court over its failure to provide anti-AIDS drugs to pregnant women. The lawsuit puts South Africa's controversial AIDS policy under pressure and, if successful, activists say it could be a first step toward making medicine to treat AIDS more widely available in the country.
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The Treatment Action Campaign, an umbrella group of AIDS activist groups, said it filed the lawsuit Tuesday because the government was violating women's and children's constitutional rights by refusing to make the anti-AIDS drug nevirapine widely available to HIV-infected pregnant women.
About 25% of babies born to HIV-infected pregnant women become infected during childbirth, according to studies. But a single dose of nevirapine to the mother during childbirth followed by a dose to the baby within three days can cut the transmission rate to about 13%. TAC says more than 150 children are born with HIV every day in South Africa, which already has an estimated 4.7 million people living with the disease. The court papers include moving testimony from mothers who were denied the drug, leaving their children HIV-positive and facing death.
A spokeswoman for the national health department said the government had yet to receive the TAC legal papers. But she repeated that the health department was using nevirapine at 18 trial sites to explore "certain operational challenges" linked to the use of the drug. The TAC said the test sites were insufficient and accused the government of failing to act on behalf of poor and vulnerable South Africans. Nevirapine is readily available in South Africa for those patients with insurance coverage and access to private health care.
The TAC says this creates a two-tier health-care system in violation of the country's constitution guaranteeing equal access to health care for all South Africans. A widespread nevirapine program could save 20,000 babies a year at a total cost of less than $30 million, less money than the government would have spent on caring for those sick babies, the TAC said.
Health Minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang has insisted the drug may not be appropriate because it could be toxic and might create a new drug-resistant strain of the AIDS virus.
Mark Heywood, the TAC's national secretary, said he believed winning this lawsuit could be a first step to forcing the government to reconsider its position. "If we are successful in this case regarding children it begins to beg the question about the parents," he said. "This may take us closer to the rational view of medicine proven effective and safe for people with HIV."
Write to Robert Block at bobby.block@wsj.com3
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