Calls to stop single-dose AIDS drug

Italian NGO Sant'Egidio has urged African countries to stop using single-dose Nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, London's Guardian newspaper reported.

Research shows that a single dose of the antiretroviral drug, given to an HIV-positive woman during labour, with a single dose to the infant soon after birth, reduces the child's chance of infection by 50 percent.

However, Sant'Egidio spokesman Mario Marazziti, at a press conference announcing the group's HIV/AIDS treatment plan for six African countries, said the prevention method had "left too many infants with the virus and doomed them to being orphans, since the single dose [does] not extend their mother's life."

Marazziti stressed that single-dose Nevirapine methods for HIV-positive pregnant women should rather be replaced with an antiretroviral drug regimen starting several months before delivery.