SA must give drugs to HIV mothers, court rules

The government is obliged to provide the anti-retroviral drug Nevirapine to all HIV-positive pregnant women, the Pretoria High Court ruled on Friday. 

Judge Chris Botha ruled in favour of the Treatment Action Campaign in its application to force the government to provide the drug to all such women in order to prevent the transmission of the virus to their unborn children. 

The judge said that the women should be suitable and they should be counselled. He also ordered that the government should, by the end of March, provide a programme of how they will extend their mother-to-child transmission prevention programme. 

Source: Sapa, 14 December 2001