Minister defends refusal to provide new drug

South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Wednesday that the AIDS drug nevirapine will not yet be made available for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV/AIDS because “some things still have to be cleared up in order to make informed policy decisions”. Speaking at a media briefing in Pretoria, the minister said that the Intrapartum Nevirapine Trials (SAINT) results presented formally at the international AIDS conference in Durban last week had left many questions, mainly around the impact of breastfeeding and the possibility of drug resistance. Last week Boehringer Ingelheim, an international pharmaceutical company said at the Durban conference that its clinical trial had shown nevirapine was effective in reducing MTCT of HIV/AIDS. It also said that it would offer the drug free to the South African ministry of health. At the time the ministry said it was considering the offer once “certain factors had been considered”. Nevrapine is not yet registered in South Africa. The minister said that she was concerned that the media and the South African public were “pushing government in a corner, forcing us to provide nevirapine, when even the scientists themselves still have unanswered questions about the drug”. She said she hoped that a government meeting with scientists on 12-13 August would bring “clarity to these questions”. She said that it was not possible to say when the department would issue nevirapine to pregnant HIV positive women in South Africa. Statistics released at the Durban conference showed that South Africa had one of the largest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world.