Nawaal Deane
If you have HIV and cannot afford a private clinic for the treatment of opportunistic diseases, where in Gauteng would you go?
Peter Foxcrost, an HIV patient, thought the best place would be Johannesburg hospital, but he was shocked to discover that its HIV clinic is closed to all new patients.
The clinic, with 3 000 patients on file, is only open once a week for four hours. “Other than the clinic there is no unit for people with HIV, no counselling, no medication,” he says angrily. “While in hospital” he was treated for pneumonia “I asked the doctor if I needed vitamins. The doctor just said ‘No’.”
Patients diagnosed with HIV are turned away or referred to Helen Joseph hospital, where they are given basic counselling and medication.
“I am furious and think it is terrible that the Johannesburg hospital does not have special doctors for people like me. That is why I will be there when they hand over a memorandum on Friday.”
A number of patients, activists and doctors representing 400 Aids service organisations are scheduled to hold a placard demonstration on Friday morning in protest against the dismal state of the Johannesburg HIV clinic.
They will hand over a memorandum with recommendations to build a model HIV clinic at Johannesburg hospital to its CEO Sagie Pillay, Gauteng MEC for Health Dr Gwen Ramagopa, Dr Liz Floyd from the Aids directorate and the Wits dean of medicine, Professor Max Price.
The memorandum will discuss the “shocking situation faced by thousands of people living with HIV and Aids who are being denied access to proper treatment and care at Johannesburg hospital.”
The clinic has little support from the hospital and since 1985 has been run by volunteer staff. According to the memorandum, the hospital diagnoses 50 people a day with HIV and these people receive neither proper advice nor assistance.
“The major problem with the clinic is that there are not enough doctors,” says Francois Venter, a Wits HIV research-unit doctor who works on a voluntary basis at the clinic. The clinic is open for four hours on a Tuesday morning; in that time each volunteer doctor sees up to 30 patients who have queued for hours.
The memorandum points out that the provincial government needs to ensure that clinics have staff and resources to treat the bulk of people living with HIV. The Johannesburg hospital, as an academic hospital, has to play a role in training doctors, nurses and primary health-care workers in the treatment of HIV patients.
Venter says that a number of patients can afford anti-retroviral drugs but only a handful of doctors nationally have experience in administering them.
Pillay says that Johannesburg hospital does not have the resources to run a primary health care clinic. “When [people living with HIV] require services of an academic nature then the hospital will assist them.” He says it is more cost effective for people with HIV to go to lower level primary health care facilities for treatment
ENDS