Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has played down the target of rolling out anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment for HIV victims by the end of the year — saying an overwhelming majority of South Africans prefers to consult traditional healers first before going to a Western health facility.
The government had set itself a target of treating 53 000 Aids patients this year but the Department of Health reported in March that there were only 2 500 Aids patients receiving ARVs nationally.
Now Tshabalala-Msimang said there are about 8 000 HIV victims on ARVs at present, according to records, and she expects a patient information system to be up and running by the end of September.
She said she does not like the word “rolling out” as this is deceptive because the treatment of Aids is complex and such a description “takes away from the perceptiveness of the [Aids fighting] programme”.
The minister, who has come under much criticism for the slow introduction of the ARV programme, said the issue that has been swept under the carpet in South Africa is that “90% of people will see a traditional healer [about Aids] before visiting Western medical facilities”.
She was not sure what the take-up of ARVs will be.
“I don’t know how many [South Africans] with HIV would want to take anti-retrovirals.”
But she noted that a long-term tender for the supply of ARVs “should be finalised within the next month”.
The minister said there is resistance also from women to take even an infant-feeding formula as they are terrified of telling their families at home that they are HIV-positive. Some of the women are known to dump the formulas near clinics rather than take them home.
Having returned from the World Health Organisation meeting recently in Bangkok, it is evident that even “huge organisations” have admitted that it will be unrealistic to put three million people on ARVs worldwide by 2005, so South Africans have to judge themselves “sensitively”.
At a briefing on Wednesday to the parliamentary media, she said her department is working with the national laboratory system to ensure that it is able to carry out the back-up work required when dealing with HIV patients, including procedures of monitoring viral loans and c-counts.
Noting that only about 65% of tuberculosis sufferers are taking their courses of medicine for the required six to nine months — with the rest discontinuing the programme — she said this has an implication for Aids sufferers on ARVs as the medicines have to be taken for the rest of a patient’s life. — I-Net Bridge