AIDS DRUG WRANGLE TO GO TO PTA HIGH COURT.

(LEADS TO FIX FIRST PAR GARBLE) The Treatment Action Campaign which has been advocating the use of the anti-Aids drug Nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission will be contesting the issue with the government at the Pretoria High Court on Monday. The government has maintained that the drug is toxic and that outside of the pilot projects there is no capacity to implement a mother-to-child transmission programme. Addressing a press briefing in Johannesburg on Thursday, TAC national chairman Mark Haywood said it was regrettable that a government whose establishment the people of the country had fought for had to be taken to court in pursuit of everybody's right to life. "After four years of advocacy, the TAC is left with no alternative but initiate legal proceedings to seek an order that will stop the violation of rights and compel the government to fulfil its constitutional obligations," he said. Dismissing the government's claim of the drug's toxicity as "nonsensical" Haywood said Nevirapine was a registered drug recommended by the World Health Organisation as being safe with no side effects. Noluthando Makhaba one of HIV-positive mothers who lost their babies due to the unavailability of the anti-Aids transmission drugs, said the government's ...