SOUTH AFRICA: Activists gear up for AIDS drug court battle

South Africa's minister of health and a provincial health minister are being taken to court by AIDS lobby group the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), for failing to provide nevirapine to pregnant women in one of the country's nine provinces.

The TAC filed an application on Tuesday against the Mpumalanga province's Sibongile Manana and the national Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, stating that Manana had failed to implement the Constitutional Court's order on preventing mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV.

While other provinces had displayed commitment to the success of the MTCT prevention programmes, Mpumalanga's health department had "followed a diametrically opposite path," a TAC statement said. The province has the third highest HIV prevalence rate in the country.

"The main reason for the court action is the blatant lies from the health department for the Mpumalanga province about the latest roll-out of antiretrovirals to six of the hospitals in the area," TAC national treatment coordinator Sipho Mthathi, told UN news agency PlusNews.

Earlier this month, the province announced the roll-out of nevirapine for MTCT prevention programmes in six of the hospitals in the province.

But this has not happened. "Five months after the Constitutional Court order there appear to be only two hospitals in Mpumalanga providing Nevirapine for mother-to-child HIV transmission prevention," the TAC noted.

On 14 December 2001, the TAC filed its first application calling for the state to provide nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women. The government fought the application until it was finally ordered by the Constitutional Court to provide the drug immediately in all its hospitals and clinics which had the facilities to provide it.

TAC's court application also seeks an order compelling Manana to provide information on what steps she has taken to implement MTCT prevention in the province.

"We have received papers from the TAC and we are going through them, it is a voluminous document so we will not be making a statement yet. But the due legal process will be observed," Mpumalanga health department spokesman Dumisani Mlangeni, told PlusNews.