Legal battle over Ivermectin to continue
AfriForum and its legal team say the medicine has been legal all along.
Civil rights organisation AfriForum is again dragging the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) to court in a bid to have doctors allowed to prescribe Ivermectin to treat patients with Covid-19.
This time, AfriForum has a new ally – the Pharma Valu pharmacy group and other organisations, including political party ACDP.
The pharmacy group’s owner, who is also a pharmacist, former Springbok rugby player Hannes Strydom, was said to be dragging the health regulatory authority to court after “new facts” have come to light.
The court application was once again expected to be heard in the North Gauteng High Court toward the end of the month.
“AfriForum and its legal team recently concluded that this medicine had been legal all along because Sahpra had failed to publish [a] notice in the Government Gazette (as the Medicines and Related Substances Act 101 of 1965 requires) registration of Ivermectin as medicine,” said AfriForum’s head of research Barend Uys last Thursday.
“AfriForum will now amend its court application to obtain a declaratory order that Ivermectin is a schedule 3 medicine and therefore does not require registration by Sahpra.”
The organisation’s second court application was expected to be heard simultaneously with that of the one brought forward by Strydom, the ACDP and other organisations from 29 to 31 March.
Uys further said that Ivermectin had, in the 30 years it has reportedly been available for, been listed as a schedule 3 medicine and Sahpra had allegedly failed to publish a notice in the government gazette to declare it as illegal.
“Ivermectin is therefore not a registrable medicine but is listed in schedule 3 of the act.
“It is clear that Ivermectin is a medicine that may be prescribed freely by doctors in terms of legislation,” he said.
Uys further claimed that “proof of its effectiveness is on the increase” as Ivermectin had already been approved by other governments for treating Covid-19.
“There is no reason to prevent doctors from or obstruct doctors in using their judgment to employ Ivermectin in their attempts to save lives.”
Legal representative for the interested parties Willie Spies, meanwhile, explained that the act regulated the distribution of medicines and medical products while also requiring that some medicines be registered before they could be sold.
“An important aspect of the restriction on unregistered medicines is that unregistered medicines are not automatically illegal.
“The regulator is compelled to first publish a notice in the Government Gazette,” he said.
He said the notice gave medicine providers and pharmacies or pharmaceutical companies that wanted to continue providing that medicine six months to register the medicine.
“It is only when this six-month period, after the publication of the notice in the government gazette expires, that the unregistered medicine becomes illegal.”
“Therefore, medicine does not simply automatically become illegal – it must first be announced as a registrable medicine and it is only when it is recalled and not registered that it becomes illegal,” Spies said.
Sahpra spokesperson Yuven Gounden said due to the matter being sub judice, the organisation “reserves comment”.
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