Court rules government must provide key AIDS drug to HIV-positive pregnant women pending appeal

Monday, March 25th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) _ A High Court judge ruled again Monday that the government must provide a key AIDS drugs to HIV-positive pregnant women even as it waits to appeal the decision to the country's highest court.

Reaffirming an earlier ruling, High Court Judge Chris Botha said the government still had to make the drug nevirapine available at public hospitals nationwide while it awaits a May hearing on appeal before Constitutional Court.

The government had requested permission to appeal to the Constitutional Court against Botha's order that nevirapine be made immediately available while an appeal on the entire case was pending.

Currently the drug is available only at 18 pilot sites.

Nevirapine is administered to infected pregnant mothers and their newborns to prevent the spread of HIV to their babies during labor.

In December, the High Court ruled in favor of AIDS activists and a group of pediatricians who asked that health authorities be ordered to make nevirapine available to all HIV-positive pregnant women, and to formulate a program to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus.

The government has appealed the ruling, arguing the Constitutional Court needed to decide whether courts could intervene in matters of policy.

Studies show nevirapine can reduce transmission of HIV by up to 50 percent.

The health department argues that inadequate infrastructure is in place to administer the drug properly and tried to restrict its distribution to the 18 pilot sites.

Botha said he did not want any more unnecessary lives lost while the government waited for its appeal to be heard and on Monday reaffirmed his order that nevirapine be made available immediately at facilities that had the capacity to provide testing and counseling.

``In essence I had to balance the loss of lives against prejudice that could never amount to more than inconvenience,'' Botha said.

Some 4.7 million South Africans _ one in nine _ are HIV positive, more people than any other country in the world. The government has been widely criticized for its haphazard approach toward combatting the pandemic.

AIDS activists who filed the nevirapine lawsuit said they sought assurances from the government that court orders would be followed after comments made over the weekend by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

Tshabalala-Msimang told South African Broadcasting Corporation that she would not heed a court order to supply nevirapine beyond the existing test sites, saying such an order violated the constitution.

Meanwhile, Archbishop Desmond Tutu condemned the government's haphazard response to the AIDS pandemic.

``We have the skills, expertise and resources. So for goodness sakes, stop fiddling,'' the South African Press Association quoted Tutu as saying.

He called on South Africa to look to other countries that are successfully fighting AIDS and compared the fights against AIDS and tuberculosis to the anti-apartheid struggle.

``We must fight these diseases with the same passion, the same commitment, the same determination,'' said Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his role in fighting South Africa's apartheid regime.