A comprehensive HIV and Aids treatment plan was approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday.
It seeks to provide at least one anti-retroviral service point in every health district within a year, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told reporters after the Cabinet meeting in Cape Town.
A longer-term aim is to give all South Africans requiring treatment access to the programme in their local municipal area within five years.
These service points will give citizens access to a continuum of care and treatment, integrated with a continuing prevention and awareness campaign.
The African National Congress on Wednesday welcomed the adoption of the programme, saying: “The adoption of the plan represents an important step forward in the incremental and progressive implementation of a national Aids programme which is both broad and comprehensive.”
According to a Cabinet statement released on Wednesday, this far-reaching decision will step up the prevention campaign so that the 40-million South Africans not infected stay that way; will strengthen community partnerships in the fight against the epidemic; will expand programmes aimed at boosting the immune system and slowing down the effects of HIV infection, including the option of traditional health treatments; will improve efforts in treating opportunistic infections; and will introduce anti-retroviral treatment for those who need it, as certified by doctors.
The report also states that the programme will require a major effort to upgrade South Africa’s national healthcare system.
This includes the “recruitment of thousands of health professionals and a very large training programme” to ensure that nurses, doctors, laboratory technicians, counsellors and other health workers have the knowledge and the skills to ensure safe, ethical and effective use of medicines.
It will also encompass a public education campaign so that patients will know what is expected of them. This will include the provision of all the necessary information about the benefits and the dangers of using anti-retrovirals.
According to the statement, more than half of the total budget that will be spent over the next five years in implementing this programme will go to upgrading health infrastructure, emphasising prevention and promoting healthy lifestyles. As such, the implementation of this plan will benefit the health system as a whole.
It further states that the programme has been made possible because of, among other reasons, a fall in the prices of drugs over the past two years as well as new opportunities to manufacture some of these drugs in South Africa; a “growing appreciation of the role of nutrition in enhancing people’s health and efficacy of medicines”; and the availability of fiscal resources to expand social
expenditure in general.
“The plan is the final piece completing the jigsaw puzzle of the National Strategic Plan for HIV and Aids 2000-2005, whose four key areas of intervention were: prevention, treatment, care and support; research, monitoring and surveillance; as well as legal and human rights,” says the statement. “We are confident that, as with our national prevention efforts, this plan will rank among the most comprehensive in the world.”
The ANC also commented: “For too long, opportunists have used the Aids epidemic and the suffering of our people as a political football. The government has correctly remained above the fray, consistently working instead to develop responses which are feasible and sustainable.”