A six-month-old baby who contracted HIV from her mother is suing South African authorities for failing to prevent it, lawyers and health officials said today.
Lawyers acting on instructions from baby Tinashe's 19-year-old mother - the family name was not been made public - have demanded a provincial health executive pay 700,000 rand ($76,000) in damages for negligence.
The suit is being conducted in the baby's name, a precedent allowed under South African law.
This child faces a very bleak future unless we win this case. The mother is unemployed and without help the child will die when she is about five years old, family lawyer Mr Richard Spoor said.
The family lawyer Mr Richard Spoor alleged health workers had been negligent in not advising the mother on how HIV would impact on her pregnancy and that a key anti-retroviral drug, nevirapine, was available in the private sector that would have cut the risks.
Mr Sibongile Manana, Health Minister for Mpumalanga province, had received the damages claim and was studying it, a ministerial spokesman said.
Legal sources said the claim could set an important precedent for thousands of women who had already transmitted HIV to their babies.
More than 150 children are born with HIV every day in South Africa, which has been hard hit by the global AIDS epidemic.