Court battle over AIDS drugs continues

A lack of resources made it impossible to provide Nevirapine to all HIV-positive pregnant women, lawyers for the South African government argued on Tuesday.

The argument by counsel for the state formed part of its response to a leading AIDS lobby group, the Treatment Action Campaign's court application to force the government to make the drug available as an effective weapon in the fight against the spread of HIV.

Acting on behalf of the state, lawyer Marumo Moerane said that there were sound management and financial reasons for limiting Nevirapine. Health budgets would be strained and the drug supply system wouldn't cope, leaving the public health sector in disarray, he added.

Nevirapine was still a "potent new drug" and there was a need to adopt "a cautious approach" in case the drug had unknown harmful effects, Moerane said. Studies have shown that Nevirapine can reduce mother to child HIV transmission by almost 50 percent. The government contended that there was still a need for further tests to prove the efficacy of the drug.

Moerane insisted that the government's current 18 pilot sites across the country where Nevirapine is in theory available, were reasonable and justified and the progress of the government's roll-out programmes would be affected by developments at the sites.

Countering the state's arguments, TAC lawyer Gilbert Marcus expressed "frustration" at the government's failure to provide answers on their ultimate goal of the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. Judge Chris Botha urged the government to provide target dates and "get moving" or else their programme would be "stuck".