HIV Baby Sues Pretoria for Not Protecting Her

A six-month-old baby who contracted HIV at birth is suing the South African government for failing to supply her mother with antiretroviral drugs that might have prevented the virus from being passed to the child. The baby, identified only as Tinashe, is claiming 700,000 rand from a provincial health authority because it failed to tell the child's 19-year-old mother, Sibongile, that she was HIV-positive, or that there were drugs that could prevent her passing the virus on to her child. A single tablet of the drug Nevirapine given during labor and a dose of syrup given to the newborn baby cuts the likelihood of HIV transmission by half.

The case stems from President Thabo Mbeki's stated skepticism over the value of such medicines, and Pretoria's repeated stalling in making available a drug that doctors and campaigners say would save 35,000 babies a year. The government refused for years to make Nevirapine available in public hospitals, initially claiming that it was too expensive and untested. It later said the health department lacked the necessary infrastructure to distribute the drugs. Baby Tinashe is suing Mpumalanga Health Minister Sibongile Manana, who had direct responsibility for policy at Rob Ferreira hospital in Nelspruit where the infected child was born. Manana is also the subject of another lawsuit by a rape support group that was expelled from the same hospital for using doctors to distribute AIDS drugs to women victims of rape. She alleged that the group was trying to bring down the government.

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