HIV does cause AIDS but it's hard to prescribe the drugs, says South Africa's ANC

The highest decision-making body of South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC), the National Executive Committee (NEC), has published a long statement on HIV and AIDS, saying that while it agreed HIV caused AIDS, antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) "could not be provided in the public health system because of prohibitive costs and the complexity of management". The ANC also stressed that "socioeconomic conditions, particularly poverty, play a critical role in both the transmission and the progression of the disease". Both of these are defendable points, potentially taking some of the confusion out of the current political storm in South Africa over HIV/AIDS. Meanwhile the latest ruling from the country's highest court--the Constitutional Court--has temporarily allowed hospitals and clinics to provide nevirapine to their pregnant HIV-positive patients, to reduce the risk of their infecting their babies. The government's top HIV/AIDS official Dr Nono Simelela added that "what is possible in terms of antiretrovirals is continuously under interrogation", but "a real, honest analysis of the health service shows that we are nowhere near providing an antiretroviral service where we could be comfortable that no harm would be done." This is a departure from President Thabo Mbeki's earlier more combative approach to HIV/AIDS, which led him to invite AIDS dissidents to sit on his advisory panel and refer frequently to the toxicity of ARVs. In April, Mbeki said in a letter to ANC members: "Some in our society and elsewhere in the world seem very determined to impose the view on all of us that the only health matters that should concern especially the black people are HIV/AIDS, HIV, and complex antiretroviral drugs, including nevirapine." Shortly after the court ruling, the influential ANC MP and former youth leader Peter Mokaba stirred up the fire further by stating publicly that HIV does not cause AIDS. He has since distributed a paper to ANC members in which he argues that ARVs themselves make people sick. But judging by the latest ANC statement this is not the majority view. Significantly, it is the courts, not the government, that have opened the door to the first mass provision of ARVs in South Africa. At present, a large number of health facilities are using the legal hiatus to give nevirapine to their patients. The hiatus has come about as a result of two government appeals against an earlier High Court execution order, made in December 2001. …