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Cape to point way for national HIV/AIDS drug plan
Jo-anne Smetherham. 11 August 2003. Cape Times. Republished courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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While the government deliberates on a national HIV/AIDS drugs scheme, the Western Cape health department is planning to extend its existing anti-retroviral (ARV) programmes to many thousands more people.
Many of the province's programmes have success rates surpassing those in first world programmes and so supply models for providing the drugs across South Africa.
"The Western Cape projects were shared in detail with the health and finance task team that drew up the report on anti-retrovirals," said Western Cape deputy-director general of health Fareed Abdullah, one of the main authors of the report on anti-retrovirals perused by cabinet on Friday.
A special meeting was called and the cabinet gave Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang until the end of next month to produce a detailed plan for a national ARV programme.
Abdullah said: "No particular model from the Western Cape has been chosen, but the province's programmes are our only substantive experience of providing anti-retrovirals in the public sector.
"We have to do this right the first time around. We have to provide enough support systems in a strong enough infrastructure." There are almost a thousand people in the public sector ARV programmes in the Western Cape, 300 of whom are children.
The province has submitted a proposal to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which includes a plan to give the drugs to another 20 000, with one site in each of the province's 25 health districts.
Abdullah said other projects in the pipeline included:
- A GF Jooste project to treat 300 people by the end of the year, and 500 people in total.
- A plan to treat 1 000 people in high-prevalence areas.
- Treating 600 people in Masiphumelele, near Noordhoek.
- A programme in Langa before the end of the year.
Speaking at the national AIDS conference in Durban last week, Martha Darder of Doctors Without Frontiers in Khayelitsha reported an 83 percent survival rate among 500 patients taking the drugs for a year. The people who died had been very ill when they started the treatment.
Similar success rates have been recorded at Somerset Hospital, where 400 patients are taking ARV, and at a project in both Gugulethu and Masiphumelele, where around 130 people are given the drugs.
At the conference, in a presentation comparing several countries, it was said adherence rates are similar, or better in South Africa than in developed countries.
"It's the greatest news that this country has had in a long time. I am very very optimistic about it. Now we have a chance to roll back the epidemic - I'm certain we will," said Abdullah of the cabinet's decision.
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