Nawaal Deane
Finding the HIV/Aids policy guidelines launched by the Department of Health last November is like trying to find snow in the Kalahari. Coleen McIver, a family practitioner, discovered this when she asked the health department for copies in preparation for an international general practitioners’ conference being held in Durban in June and was told that they have run out.
“These guidelines are important for all health care and general practitioners to help people living with HIV,” says McIver. She was shocked that the guidelines are not distributed nationally in clinics and doctors’ rooms. “They should be as available as telephone books,” she says.
The guidelines are made up of nine booklets. Each booklet focuses on a different facet of HIV/Aids. The Beyond Awareness Campaign was granted the tender to print 10 000 copies of each booklet but by the end of February most had been given away. At the end of last year, when the tender expired, a new company had not been reappointed to print the booklets.
“It contains really excellent information, providing basic essentials for any person living with HIV that could extend their lives,” McIver says. She says many people are under the misconception that HIV can only be treated with anti-retroviral drugs but the guidelines include advice on correct nutrition and proper treatment that could add years to the life of a person living with HIV.
“These guidelines should be made available to primary care sisters, in rural hospitals and clinics on a national level,” she says.
McIver was frustrated and shocked by the lack of action by the health department to produce or even try to distribute these booklets nationally. “When I called the department and asked how I could receive a copy I was told to pick up one in Pretoria,” says McIver. She also asked how general practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal or Cape Town could obtain a copy and was bluntly told: “They must come here to fetch it.”
After a series of telephone calls to the department’s HIV/Aids offices and many transfers it was evident that no one knew when copies would be available. “There is no stock,” was the reply by one official who went on to refer McIver to the Beyond Awareness offices for copies.
“There is no stock but we do have copies of one of the booklets,” says Christopher Matohnsi, manager of the Beyond Awareness warehouse. He offered to post a maximum of 10 copies if the postage money was sent.
According to James Rebelo, contract printer: “The government will appoint another company in the next couple of weeks to begin printing.” He says that the health department has instructed the government printers to produce the booklets. McIver says the general practitioners’ conference will be attended by doctors from South Africa and abroad. “There is a huge gap in the HIV care in our country if we can’t distribute valuable information or even have enough copies available.”