The Health Department is increasing access to HIV/Aids prevention, care and treatment services, it said ahead of Friday’s World Aids Day.
About 11 000 patients are joining the antiretroviral programme every month, and 213 828 adults and children had been put on the programme by the end of September this year, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said in a statement on Wednesday.
Antiretroviral treatment is now available at 273 hospitals and clinics nationwide for patients with a CD4 count of 200 or below.
She said the strategic plan for HIV/Aids and sexually transmitted infections for 2007-2011 is being revised.
”[This will] ensure continuity of the current strategies while introducing additional interventions required to keep up with recent advances in knowledge,” she said.
The South African National Aids Council is also being reviewed to ensure that it reflects the department’s response to the pandemic.
Child Welfare South Africa (CWSA) said NGOs such as itself are struggling to care for the increasing number of children orphaned by the pandemic.
”In order to reach and touch the lives of many more children who are being made vulnerable by HIV/Aids, CWSA is currently seeking partnerships, with local and overseas funders,” said CWSA’s Gauteng director, Beena Chiba, in a statement.
This would enable it to roll out its Asibavikele (Let’s Protect Them) programme, which was piloted in 21 local communities and had successfully reached the most vulnerable children there.
The programme mobilised and created partnerships with communities and trained volunteers to identify and register orphans. They were given grief and trauma counselling, food security, shelter, birth registration and identity documents, social security and schooling. — Sapa