About 150 doctors and nurses picketed at Chris Hani-Baragwanath hospital in Soweto on Friday in support of a treatment plan for Aids patients, a Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) spokesperson said.
The health workers expressed their frustration about having to see people dying, and not being able to give them the medication they needed, Joanna Ncala said.
Similar lunch-hour pickets were held at hospitals in the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal. Various unions representing the workers have expressed their support for the action.
Wearing T-shirts with the words ”HIV-positive” and ”Health workers support the treatment plan”, the workers in Johannesburg complained about being overworked, Ncala said.
In Pretoria earlier this week, Chris Hani-Baragwanath nurse Edna Bokaba said the hospital was short of over 1000 nurses.
She said 80% of patients admitted to that hospital had opportunistic infections related to HIV.
”No effort is being made to educate health care workers so that when the roll-out comes they can be ready.”
South African Medical Association chairperson Dr Kgosi Letlape said at the same news conference that should the government approve a treatment plan, the capacity existed to treat about 100 000 Aids patients with antiretroviral drugs at state health facilities within the next three to four months.
According to Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) national secretary Mark Heywood, there are between 500 000 and a million people in the country in need of such treatment.
The TAC wants the government to develop the capacity to treat such patients along with the roll-out of the drugs, like Brazil did.
Heywood said there was a chance that the cabinet might approve the treatment plan at its meeting on Wednesday.
The TAC was ”hopeful, but not too optimistic” that this would happen. – Sapa