E-drug: PAC will take Zuma to court on HIV drug
----------------------------------------------------------
Read this news release on Treatment Access list and thought some of
the folks on E-drugs would be interested by this evolution.
Ngoyi Bukonda
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115
E-mail: nbukonda@niu.edu
============ ====== =====
PAC will take Zuma to court on HIV drug
ANDRE JURGENS
South African Sunday Times, 18 April 1999
HEALTH Minister Nkosazana Zuma's refusal to give HIV-positive pregnant
women a drug that could save their babies is to be challenged in court.
"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 (PAC) 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."
--------------------------------------------------------
- A posting from treatment-access@hivnet.ch
--
Send mail for the `E-Drug' conference to `e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.
Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.