NEWS
MPs want Aids drugs - Sapa, November 14

Cape Town - A parliamentary committee has come out openly against President Thabo Mbeki and the health ministry's current thinking on HIV/Aids, by supporting - among other things - the use of anti-retrovirals (ARVs), despite their toxicity.

The joint monitoring committee on the improvement of the quality of life and status of women held public hearings in October and November on how best South Africa could address the impact of HIV and Aids on women and girls. < br> In a wide-ranging report on the hearings, adopted on Wednesday, the committee said: "There are members of this committee who daily take on the responsibility of caring for members of their families and communities who have HIV and Aids".

The hearings had posed "painful personal and political challenges", it said. The hearings started from the same premise as the government's, that HIV caused Aids, and the committee had not entered into a debate between dissidents and conventional scientists on the matter.

The committee found rich and middle-class people in South Africans who were HIV-positive or had Aids could choose to access anti-retroviral treatment and had access to good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.

"Poor people who have HIV and Aids - the majority of whom are African, young and female - have no such option available to them. Too often they have limited access to the basics of water, nutrition and good health care, including treatment."
On the use of ARVs, the report said that on the basis of the range of evidence presented to it concerning mother-to-child-transmission (MTCT), "the benefits outweigh the risk and it is affordable".

The committee recommended the Department of Health should develop its operational plan in relation to MTCT, as required by government's HIV, Aids and STD strategic plan.

It should have a clear timetable, implementation programme and budget. "The recommendation is that it start with existing capacity in its tertiary institutions and the pilot sites, whilst using this to build and strengthen capacity elsewhere.

"The committee recommends that women must exercise their right to choice in relation to their own health, after being informed fully of the benefits and side effect of ARV treatment ... This committee believes that this would help alleviate the plight of poor women."

On ARV therapy for raped women, the committee noted they could get post-exposure prophylaxis in the private sector.
The high and shocking levels of rape demanded an urgent response from the state. "At present there is no access to treatment in the public sector for these babies, children and women (who are being raped)."
The committee said an expert committee needed to be urgently convened by government to examine recommendations for best practice, and develop a guideline for use of ARVs as post-exposure prophylaxis for rape. "The committee believes outrage at the horror of these rapes has to be converted into action to prevent the additional tragedy of the rape survivor (baby, child or woman) contracting HIV and Aids."

On the potential toxicity of the drugs, the committee said the hearings again said nurses and health workers could be trained on the possible side effects and how to deal with them.

"They describe how demoralising it is to be unable to treat HIV and Aids itself," the report says. The committee referred to the US Centre for Disease Control's guidelines, referred to by President Thabo Mbeki when he warned MPs in Parliament last month about the toxicity of ARVs.

However, the committee said one of the authors of the guidelines, Dr Robert Schooley, had stated in an interview: "There is no question there are side effects from these drugs. But I would rather deal with the side effects than death."
The report will be tabled in Parliament.>

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