Nevirapine is poison, says Health Minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
She made the comment in an interview on Sunday with the US newspaper Newsday, on the first day of the International Aids Conference in Barcelona.
Last Friday the Constitutional Court denied the government leave to appeal against a high court order compelling it to provide nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women in all state hospitals.
Tshabalala-Msimang told Newsday that she was unhappy with the ruling, but would abide by it.
"The High Court has decided the constitution says I must give my people a drug that isn't approved by the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration). I must poison my people," she told Newsday.
But Dr Allan Rosenfield, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said that although the FDA had never been asked to approve single-dose nevirapine for use by pregnant Americans, its use as one of the drugs in the anti-HIV drug cocktail had been approved.
Dr James McIntyre, director of the University of Witwatersrand's Perinatal HIV Research Unit in Soweto, who is also in Spain, reacted to Tshabalala-Msimang's comments by saying: "I'm speechless. All we hoped was that the drug would be used the way the World Health Organisation and international agencies say it should."
McIntyre said an estimated 250 000 HIV-infected women gave birth annually in South Africa. In contrast, the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Monday that only 370 babies were born HIV-positive in the US in 2000, largely because of the efficacy of such medication. - Independent Foreign Service