South Africa to treat all HIV-positive babies

President Jacob Zuma -- once ridiculed for saying a shower could prevent AIDS -- was cheered as he outlined the measures on World AIDS Day. The new policy marks a dramatic shift from former President Thabo Mbeki, whose health minister distrusted drugs developed to keep AIDS patients alive and instead promoted garlic and beet treatments. Those policies led to more than 300,000 premature deaths, a Harvard study concluded.

The changes are in line with new guidelines issued a day earlier by the World Health Organization that call for HIV-infected pregnant women to be given drugs earlier and while breast-feeding. By treating all HIV-infected babies, survival rates should also improve for the youngest citizens in South Africa, one of only 12 countries where child mortality has worsened since 1990, in part due to AIDS.

Zuma compared the fight against HIV, which infects one in 10 South Africans, to the decades-long struggle his party led against the apartheid government, which ended in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela in the country's first multiracial vote.

South Africa, a nation of about 50 million, has an estimated 5.7 million people infected with HIV, more than any other country.

Zuma said in his speech broadcast across South Africa on state radio and television that the policy changes would take effect in April. They include treatment for all children under 1 year old, regardless of their level of CD4 cells, a measure of immune system health.

Patients with both tuberculosis and HIV will get treatment if their CD4 count is 350 or less, compared to 200 now, which means treatment would start earlier. Pregnant women who are HIV-positive also would start treatment earlier. That is in line with the new WHO recommendations that doctors start HIV patients on drugs when their level of CD4 cells is about 350; Kazinform cites China Daily. See www.chinadaily.com.cn for full version.