Today, December 1st, is World AIDS day. A special lecture is taking place this evening in the Royal Irish Academy, Kildare Street, Dublin, on the issue from an African perspective. The disease is a reality for many suffering people today. But it is in Africa that its impact is felt most keenly. HIV/AIDS is a reality for 9 per cent of Africa's populations. According to a recent Hastings Center Report, in eleven African countries in 2010 will, on average, have a life expectancy of about thirty years. As the Report points out, this health outcome has not been seen in Africa since the nineteenth century.

And yet, it need not be like this. We feel powerless about the issue. We know that AIDS in Africa and its escalating tragic consequences is linked to pre-natal transmission of the virus. The Hastings Center Report concurs with those who argue that AIDS in Africa is largely preventable. There are models of success found in Uganda and Senegal, where HIV incidence among pregnant women and infants has significantly declined. "Research in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia has shown that less expensive short-course antiretroviral regimens diminish perinatal transmission by one-third to one-half. A trial in Uganda of a single oral dose of nevirapine given to the mother and newborn had similar benefits."

Despite this research evidence,Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, believes that HIV/AIDS in Africa involves institutionalized racism. It is a pandemic visited upon Africa by the West. He has resisted guaranteeing all pregnant women antiretroviral treatment; he made nevirapine available only at a number of limited pilot sites.

So what to do? A human rights organisation, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) took the South African Government to court to vindicate a human right to health for pregnant women and infants. The Court ruled that protecting the child against the transmission of HIV is essential; to prevent this or to obstruct this is to contravene the right to health and life of the child. The Constitutional Court of South Africa has ruled that mothers have a right to pre-natal clinical intervention, including access to the drug, nevirapine, a low-cost medicine. This has been a landmark decision, not only for Africa, but for the whole world.

Reference: Lawrence O. Gostin,
Aids in Africa among Women and Infants: A Human Rights Framework, Hastings Center, 2006.

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