GORDON BELL, Cape Town | Thursday
FINANCE Minister Trevor Manuel on Thursday warned about the cost of providing antiretrovirals (ARV) nationally, saying the drugs were not the only weapon in South Africa’s fight against HIV and Aids.
Speaking on SABC radio, he said if government were to provide ARVs countrywide, the cost would use up the entire health budget.
”Given the cost of it on a sustainable basis, we would have to devote virtually all of the health budget to just dealing with it,” Manuel said.
The minister announced in his 2002/03 Budget speech on Wednesday that R997-million would be spent on Aids, rising to R1,8-billion in 2004.
This was on top of R4-billion already spent by provinces.
Manuel on Thursday said ARVs were only a part of the programme to fight the disease.
Government was involved in a range of programmes on Aids.
These included mother-to-child transmission test sites, providing condoms, voluntary counselling and testing, education, home-based care for the terminally ill, and a range of programmes dealing with opportunistic infections.
”For whatever reason, the debate on antiretrovirals seems to be the only thing that people think deals with Aids.
”We don’t at this stage have a cure for it — all that you can do is ameliorate, and that’s what antiretrovirals do. They don’t cure.”
Manuel said it was important to make South Africans understand that ARVs were only a ”sliver” in the battle against Aids, and should not take up all available resources.
The African National Congress on Wednesday said the Gauteng government had ”jumped the mark” in announcing a full nevirapine roll-out programme, given that studies on the efficacy of the drug were not complete.
Party representative Smuts Ngonyama said the ANC believed a decision regarding nevirapine could only be made once Aids studies in all provinces were complete.
Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa said in his Budget speech earlier this week the province would provide the anti-retroviral drug nevirapine to pregnant HIV-positive women. – Sapa