A Move to Force South Africa to Give AIDS Drug for Newborns

A team of lawyers in South Africa went to court Monday to try to force the government to widely distribute a drug that significantly reduces a pregnant woman's risk of transmitting the AIDS virus to her newborn. Every year, 70,000 babies are born HIV positive in South Africa, which has more people infected with the AIDS virus than any other nation.

The government currently offers the drug, nevirapine, to pregnant women infected with the AIDS virus at 18 pilot sites around the country. Officials have refused to expand the program, even though doctors in some public hospitals are ready to provide testing, counseling and support for women who need the drug. The program reaches only about 90,000 women a year -- about 10 percent of those who give birth annually in South Africa. Government officials say they need time to monitor the sites before expanding so that they can identify and resolve any problems. Officials also say they want to watch for possible side effects of nevirapine before distributing it more widely.

Lawyers representing people with HIV said the program unfairly denies poor women access to a powerful drug that might save their babies. One tablet of nevirapine taken during labor -- along with a single dose for the newborn -- can reduce the risk of transmission by as much as 50 percent. The pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim, which manufactures nevirapine, has offered to provide it free to South Africa for five years. Gilbert Marcus, a lawyer for the Treatment Action Campaign, an advocacy group, said the government's decision to limit the program to 18 sites "arbitrarily, unnecessarily and irrationally amounts to a conscious choice, vigorously defended by the respondents, which results in the predictable and yet avoidable deaths of those children." Judge Chris Botha, who is hearing the case, seemed inclined to agree. "It seems to me it has to be extended across the country as soon as is practically possible," Botha said.

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