South Africa bows to pressure on treating Aids

In an abrupt U-turn, South Africa's government has announced that it will use drugs to treat HIV and Aids.

President Thabo Mbeki's administration, which has been under pressure from the international community to change its stance on the virus, plans to provide anti-retrovirals to HIV-positive pregnant women and rape survivors by the end of this year.

But the government said it could not afford to provide drugs to everyone with Aids, even though it had trebled its Aids budget to R1bn (£62m).

Until now, Mr Mbeki has notoriously questioned the causal link between HIV and Aids and has said anti-retroviral drugs could be more dangerous than the disease itself.

For the first time the government has accepted anti-retrovirals as a valid way to treat the disease and has now pledged "new and better commitment" to fighting it.

The government communication director Joel Netshitenzhe told a news conference: "We are facing a pandemic for which there is no cure and the starting point of government is based on the premise that HIV causes Aids."

The virus is killing about 5,000 people a week in South Africa. The labour consultancy NMG-Levy predicted yesterday that nearly 30 per cent of the workforce would be HIV- positive in 2005, and that by 2010 a million South Africans would be sick with Aids and six million would have died from Aids- related diseases.

The government has been under huge pressure from Aids activists, doctors, opposition parties, churches and the international community to change its approach to Aids.

It is thought that this, and a series of legal challenges – including a Constitutional Court order this month for the government to provide Nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women to help to prevent mother-to-child transmission – helped to prompt the change of heart.