South Africa faced the prospect today of being taken to court by the country's leading AIDS group for denying HIV-positive pregnant women drugs that cut the risk of transmitting the disease to their newborn.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is demanding Pretoria roll out a national programme to distribute a key anti-retroviral drug called
nevirapine
to help reduce the 70,000 South African children born each year with HIV.
The Pretoria Health Ministry said it had responded today to a TAC deadline by restating its position that it was too early to begin nationwide provision of nevirapine.
Any court action against the government would put the spotlight back on Pretoria's controversial AIDS policy.
The country has more people living with HIV-AIDS than anywhere in the world, with close to five million sufferers.
But South Africa has prevented the use of anti-retroviral drugs in the state health sector on cost and safety grounds.
President Thabo Mbeki has attracted a storm of controversy after questioning the causal link between HIV and AIDS and the efficacy of anti-retrovirals such as AZT.
A legal battle with the TAC would be a severe embarrassment to the government, as it was a key ally in a landmark court case against the world's biggest drug firms this year over the right of poor countries to import cheap AIDS drugs.
The TAC successfully forced the court in Pretoria to accept testimony on the suffering caused by the lack of access to drugs for AIDS sufferers, a key moment that made 39 major drug firms pull out of the case fearing a public relations disaster.