BIRTH DEFECT CONCERNS
Health department opts to delay HIV drug over safety fears
Safety concerns have forced the Department of Health to delay its plans to provide HIV patients with dolutegravir, a cheaper and more tolerable alternative to one of the components currently used in the three-drug cocktail taken by most state patients. The development is not only bad news for patients, but also throws a spanner in the works of the state’s plans to increase the number of HIV patients on treatment from 3.9-million to over 6-million by 2020-21. The department planned to provide patients with a generic fixed-dose combination pill containing tenofovir, lamivudine and dolutegravir in September, but was now unlikely to do so before next April, said Yogan Pillay, its deputy director-general. Dolutegravir will replace efavirenz in the three-drug pill. In May, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority and medicine regulators in the US and Europe sounded a warning over dolutegravir, after a small study in Botswana reported birth defects among pregnant women who we...
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