South African AIDS activists have threatened legal action against the country's Medicines Control Council (MCC) for its move to deregister a vital anti-AIDS drug.
The MCC said earlier this week it would withdraw permission for the use of nevirapine in preventing mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV because it did not accept the results of a key Ugandan study on the drug's efficacy.
However, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said in a statement that all the publicly available data on the use of a short course of nevirapine for MTCT prevention had indicated it was safe and effective.
"If the MCC has information to the contrary, it must make this available because of the public interest in this issue. In the meanwhile we will seek legal opinion on how to proceed on this matter," the TAC said.
The group accused the MCC of having played "political games" with the registration of nevirapine since 1999.
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