Five of the nine provinces had underspent their HIV/Aids grant allocations for the 2002/2003 financial year.
In a written reply to a question from the Democratic Alliance in the National Assembly, Health Minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang revealed that for the last two financial periods Mpumalanga has grossly underspent on HIV/Aids.
Mpumalanga has spent only 38% of its HIV/Aids grant allocation from national government for the 2002/2003 financial year. In the 2001/2002 period it had spent only 33%.
Last year the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) lodged a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission against Mpumalanga Health member of the executive committee Sibongile Manana.
The TAC accused Manana of defying a Constitutional Court ruling on the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV/Aids.
Tshabala-Msimang said that Gauteng had spent only 52% of its allocation.
The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has estimated that the Free State followed by Gauteng and Mpumalanga were the three provinces with the highest infection rates in the country.
She said the Eastern Cape had spent only 88% of its budget; Limpopo 90% and the Western Cape 98%.
The Free State has spent its entire budget allocation of R18 657 000 for the 2002/2003 financial year.
The province has steadily increased its spending for the last three years.
The minister said that the North-West Province and KwaZulu-Natal were the only two provinces that had overspent their budgets for 2002/2003.
The HSRC estimates that KwaZulu-Natal has a 11,7% infection rate — the fourth highest in the country.
The Northern Cape has also spent its total budget.
Earlier this year the University of South Africa’s Bureau of Market Research said that HIV/Aids was expected to slash 12-million off South Africa’s population growth by 2015.
In the absence of HIV/Aids, South Africa’s population would have totalled 61-million by 2015, but due to the effects of the virus it was now expected to grow to about 49-million by that time.
In five years’ time, HIV prevalence would average between 25% and 30%.
About 40% of adult deaths in the calendar years 2000 and 2001 were Aids-related, compared to 9% in 1995 and 1996. – Sapa