ANC slams US Aids 'action'
2004-12-17 20:28
Special Report
The South African government has announced a joint venture to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral drugs with a Swiss company.
Johannesburg - The African National Congress carried an article in its online journal on Friday accusing top United States officials of treating Africans like guinea pigs and telling lies to promote the sales of a key Aids drug.
The article, published in ANC Today, was responding to Associated Press reports this week that US health officials withheld concerns about a key nevirapine study before President George W Bush launched a 2002 plan to distribute the drug in Africa to protect newborns from catching HIV from their infected mothers.
Documents obtained by AP show that Dr Edmund C Tramont, chief of the National Institutes of Health's Aids division, rewrote an NIH report to omit negative conclusions about the safety and conduct of a US-funded trial in Uganda.
He later ordered the research to continue despite objections of his staff.
"In other words, they entered into a conspiracy with a pharmaceutical company to tell lies to promote the sales of nevirapine in Africa with absolutely no consideration of the health impact of those lies on the lives of millions of Africans," said the article.
Did not reflect party policy
"...Dr Tramont was happy that the peoples of Africa should be used as guinea pigs, given a drug he knew very well should not be prescribed."
Smuts Ngonyama, an ANC spokesman and editor of the party's journal, said the article was an opinion piece by a member and did not reflect official party policy. He declined to identify the author.
Dr H Clifford Lane, the NIH's No 2 infectious disease specialist and one of Tramont's bosses, has said an internal review cleared Tramont of scientific misconduct.
He said Tramont changed the report because he was more experienced than his safety experts and had an "honest difference of opinion".
Tramont has also argued that Africans with an Aids crisis deserved some leniency in meeting tough US safety standards.
Seventy percent of the 45 million people worldwide infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Studies have shown that a single dose of nevirapine to an infected woman during labor and another dose to her newborn baby can reduce the chances of HIV transmission by up to 50 percent. Nevirapine is also used in combination with other drugs to prolong the lives of AIDS patients.
Subsequent research has confirmed the safety and efficacy of nevirapine in protecting newborns, according to the World Health Organisation.
Simple and practical
But there is evidence that women who receive a single dose during pregnancy can develop resistance to the drug that can compromise their own future treatment.
WHO recommends nevirapine be used in combination with other drugs where possible - a strategy that has reduced transmission to less than 1% in wealthier countries.
But, it says resistance concerns must be weighed against the simplicity and practicality of administering a single dose of nevirapine in impoverished African countries.
- AP