Johannesburg — OPPOSITION parties have called for the continued use of nevirapine to help prevent the motherto-child transmission of HIV despite the African National Congress's (ANC's) concerns about the safety of the drug.

This comes after the ANC accused AIDS lobby group Treatment Action Campaign of fronting for drug companies and of being indifferent to the lives of Ugandans who were involved in a study of nevirapine. The ANC made the accusations in its weekly newsletter on Friday.

In its newsletter, the ANC referred to a report last week that said there were concerns about the Ugandan study.

The report said testing of nevirapine at Uganda's Mulago Hospital had failed to meet international standards and that pregnant women who took the drug once might develop resistance to it that could inhibit later drug therapies to combat the disease.

Pan Africanist Congress health spokesman Costa Gazi said hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive women in countries such as SA and Brazil had taken the drug without any side-effect.

"The ANC is still angry that the Constitutional Court ordered government to supply HIV-positive mothers with a drug to prevent the transmission of the virus to their children. President (Thabo) Mbeki has not yet grasped the fact that the deadliest enemy facing the country is the scourge of HIV," Gazi said.

He said the ANC's doubts about the efficiency of nevirapine were likely to frighten HIV positive pregnant women into taking a single dose.

Gazi said the administration of nevirapine could reduce the chances of HIV transmission by up to 50%.

"Providing nevirapine to pregnant mothers is the simplest and the cheapest way to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child," Gazi said.

Democratic Alliance health spokesman Butch Steyn said the use of nevirapine remained the only way at present to prevent the transmission of the virus from mother to child.