South Africa Launches AIDS Guide for Civil Service, Takes Stock of Disease

South Africa on Thursday introduced a guide to help its civil servants deal with HIV/AIDS, while the government said it was looking at ways to lower the costs of antiretroviral treatment.

The 154-page manual "HIV/AIDS in the Workplace" would help put an end to discrimination against civil servants with the disease, said Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. "The manual contains the minimum standards that all departments were expected to comply with," she said at a two-day meeting addressing the epidemic in South Africa's civil service.

On Wednesday, the government announced it was "actively engaged in challenges to be overcome to create the conditions that would make it feasible and effective to use antiretrovirals in the public health sector." "We are working to lower the costs of these drugs, at present too costly for universal access, and to strengthen the health system to ensure that the drugs are not used incorrectly in ways that can cause harm," the government said in a statement.

In July, South Africa's highest judicial authority denied a government request to appeal a High Court ruling forcing it to give AIDS drugs to all HIV-positive pregnant women. Last December, Pretoria's high court ordered the state to give nevirapine to HIV-positive women to limit their risk of passing the virus to their babies. "After the Constitutional Court judgment, all provinces received guidelines for the implementation of the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) package according to their differing capacities," the government said Thursday.

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