Pregnant S Africans win HIV rights

Nelson Mandela championed the call for a HIV drugs promramme

PRETORIA, South Africa (CNN) -- The South African supreme court has ruled that the government must extend medical treatment to all pregnant women with the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

AIDS activists who packed the court gallery cheered and hugged each other as Judge Chris Botha read a brief judgment stating that the government had to make the drug nevirapine available to all women giving birth in public hospitals.

The case was the first major legal challenge to the government's policy on AIDS medication.

The ruling was sought by the South African AIDS activist group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which argued that distributing the antiretroviral drug in public hospitals countrywide would help reduce the number of South African children born with HIV.

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TAC also argued that the government had a duty to offer nevirapine under the constitutional right to health care.

The country has more people living with HIV-AIDS than any other country in the world, with close to five million, or one in nine of its population, estimated to be HIV-positive.

The official figure for babies born HIV-positive is 70,000 a year.

A dose of nevirapine -- a tablet given to the mother during labour and a teaspoon of syrup to the baby within the first 72 hours of birth -- can cut infant infection rates by up to 50 percent.

Earlier this month in remarks made on World Aids Day, former South African President Nelson Mandela called for AIDS victims to be given easier access to drugs that fight the disease.

"For those who are HIV-positive, we must ensure that they get the proper treatment and drugs which are going to help them resist the pandemic," he said.

The German drug company Boehringer Ingelheim has offered nevirapine free to developing countries. South Africa has yet to accept the offer, although it is testing the drug at 18 pilot sites.

That means distribution of the drug to some 90,000 women, but according to TAC, there are more than 1 million pregnancies a year in South Africa.

The government had no immediate comment on the court action, which also requires it to provide other medical treatment and counselling.

Officials had said that implementing a comprehensive HIV/AIDS-treatment initiative would be too costly and that nevirapine's safety remains unproven.