‘Anti-retroviral drugs not only solution’

S Africa does not deny treatment to AIDS patients, says its Health Minister

Sreelatha Menon

New Delhi, April 30: THE South African Health Minister today clarified that not giving anti-retroviral drugs (ARDs) for HIV/AIDS was not the same as not treating the patient.

Tshabalala Msimang, who was here to sign an agreement with India on mutual cooperation in the field of health care, said that an erroneous message was being sent to the people by giving the impression that anti-retroviral drugs were the only solution to AIDS.

‘‘We have a long list of essential drugs in South Africa which includes drugs for all the opportunistic infections that an HIV-positive person gets. So it is not as if a government, by not supplying ARDs, is not doing anything for the HIV-positive person,’’ she said.

Msimang was addressing a joint press conference here with Health Minister C. P. Thakur to announce the agreement according to which Indian pharmaceutical companies will now start operating in South Africa in a bid to make medicines available at affordable prices.

The people of both India and South Africa were being given the wrong message when they were told that their governments did not care for the people by denying them ARDs, Msimang said. Even if the drugs were cheap, it would be dangerous to give patients the drugs without setting up a machinery to monitor patients taking these highly-toxic medicines, she said.

‘‘Our health policies cannot be confined to HIV or any one disease alone. We cannot have a health minister of heart disease or some other disease,’’ she said.

On the agreement on cooperation between the two countries, she said that Ranbaxy and Cipla had already started working in her country and she was seeking the assistance of the Indian government to help her identify more companies.

‘‘We have just emerged victorious from a legal battle with multinational companies over cheap generic drugs and we walked up to India to share the victory,’’ she said, adding that the assistance from either side cannot be quantified at present.