East London | Tuesday
THE Eastern Cape health department said on Monday it needed three weeks to determine which health institutions in the province had the capacity to administer the anti-retroviral, nevirapine, to HIV-positive pregnant women.
Departmental representative Mahlubandile Mageda said the department did not know yet which hospitals had capacity, but nine hospitals in the province said on Monday they would be able to administer the drug.
Mageda said his department accepted and respected last week’s Constitutional Court ruling that the government had to make the drug available to HIV-positive pregnant women to reduce mother-to-child transmission of the virus.
Mageda said the department was starting to identify possible sites and training of doctors and midwives was underway.
Despite the government’s uncertainty, nine hospitals said they were ready to extend the nevirapine programme, two said they did not have the capacity and six more would not comment.
Medical superintendent of Umtata General Hospital, Dr Pumelelo Nkanyuza, said it would be ”all systems go” should the hospital receive the go-ahead from the provincial government.
”We do, however, have a pilot project at the University of Transkei’s medical faculty. We also have personnel carrying out counselling at the clinic there.”
A Butterworth Hospital official confirmed that the hospital was ready to start.
The superintendent of St Patrick’s Hospital in Bizana, Dr George Verghese, said the hospital was also ready.
”That should not be a problem. We will dispense the drug in the normal way as we do with other drugs and it will not be an extra burden,” Verghese said.
In Lusikisiki, Superintendent Dr TC Thomas said St Elizabeth Hospital’s was ready if it got the go-ahead.
In Dordrecht, medical superintendent of the provincially aided hospital, Dr Hoffie Conradie, said the facility ”definitely” had the capacity to administer nevirapine.
He could not comment on behalf of clinics, which would have to do blood tests and counselling of pregnant women.
Medical superintendent of Maclear Hospital, Dr Roelof Vorster, said the hospital would manage ”as long as it was in conjunction with clinics”.
Dr Neville Jada of Frontier Hospital in Queenstown said if government gave the go-ahead he did not foresee a capacity problem.
The matron of Victoria Hospital in Alice, who wished to remain anonymous, said her hospital had the capacity.
”We could administer it if they (the department) permit us to do so.”
Bisho Hospital superintendent Dr Peter John said the hospital would administer the drug if it had the budget and had been instructed to do so by the government.
Two hospitals said they did not have the capacity to implement the programme.
In Port St Johns, the community health centre said the centre’s only doctor resigned on Saturday. The nearby Isilimela referral hospital –25km away — lost its three doctors last month when their contracts ended.
Meanwhile a former health MEC has lashed out at the government for creating ”spurious” obstacles to introducing nevirapine at hospitals.
Dr Trudy Thomas said the provincial Health Department’s claim that it would take three weeks to ascertain which institutions in the province had the ”capacity” to administer Nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women was ”absolute nonsense”.
Accusing politicians and bureaucrats of creating ”spurious” obstacles to introducing the drug at hospitals, Thomas said that any hospital or institution with a qualified doctor had the capacity, if the HIV test kits and the drug were made available. – Sapa