By
The Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - A new South African project to provide free AIDS medication to some HIV-positive pregnant women has given activists hope the government is abandoning its controversial approach to the disease and beginning to fight the threat in earnest.
The government had previously argued it lacked the resources and money to provide medicine to pregnant women to prevent the transmission of HIV to their babies.
But last week it announced a pilot program to supply the anti-retroviral drug Nevirapine to infected, pregnant women in 18 hospitals and clinics across the country.
The results of the study are to be evaluated over the next year. If the drug proves effective, the program will be extended.
"I would hope that this is a sign that this kind of good sense will prevail," said Jenny Marcus, coordinator of Community AIDS Response, a support group for people living with AIDS.
With an estimated 10 percent of its 45 million people infected with the virus, South Africa has the world's largest population of HIV-positive people. But its policies on the disease have been criticized in the past.
President Thabo Mbeki consulted with fringe theorists who deny the link between HIV and AIDS, and some who questioned whether AIDS exists at all. Mbeki questioned the toxicity of widely used AIDS medications and questioned whether they did more harm than good.
South Africa was also criticized for refusing to produce or import cheap, generic versions of expensive AIDS drugs and for previously declining to provide anti-retroviral medication to pregnant women.
In October, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang unveiled government guidelines on preventing mother-to-child transmission of the disease that made no mention of anti-retroviral medications, which health experts consider the most effective treatment.
But the government has softened its positions in recent months. Mbeki's office said he was withdrawing from the AIDS debate, the government agreed to accept a $50 million donation from the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer of a drug for AIDS patients and high-ranking officials appealed to South Africans to recognize the serious threat of the disease.
For many activists, the announcement of the Nevirapine program last week was the most concrete evidence the government had changed its position.
"It is certainly a positive step, and I don't believe it is a step that can be retreated from," said Mark Heywood, director of the AIDS Law Project and a prominent AIDS activist.
However, the pilot project was insufficient, he said.
"The government should make the medicine available to any woman in the country who is pregnant and knows she has HIV, because we know the efficacy and we know the affordability," he said.
A three-dose regimen of the drug - two for the mother and one for the baby - costs $4 and studies have shown it can reduce the number of babies born with the disease by about one-third.
