War against HIV/Aids far from over, says TAC

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) says the war against the HIV/Aids epidemic cannot be won in South Africa until the government fixes the country’s broken healthcare system.

TAC general secretary Anele Yawa said the organisation’s message to the public and the government on the commemoration of World Aids Day on 1 December was that though some battles had been won, the war against the epidemic was not yet over.

Yawa said considering that about 7.8 million South Africans live with HIV, with about 4.8 million of them on antiretrovirals (ARVs), this meant about two million people living with HIV had not been initiated on to treatment, which was one sign that the war against the epidemic was far from over.

Yawa said last year South Africa reported that about 70,000 HIV-related deaths and that the country recorded an estimated 240,000 new HIV infections annually, which, again, indicated that the war against the epidemic was ongoing.

Yawa said HIV-related deaths were “not just numbers” but people’s lives that had been lost.

Another issue Yawa pointed out was that many HIV patients had fallen off from follow-up care, while others had defaulted on their treatment, matters which can be blamed on the country’s ailing healthcare system.

The country’s struggling healthcare system fails to adequately service people living with HIV, Yawa said, adding that the damaged healthcare systems was characterised by the foul attitude of some nurses.

Yawa said some nurses ill-treat patients who miss their appointments to collect their treatment when they eventually do come to pick it up and that some allegedly disclose the HIV status of patients without their consent, all of which contributed to people defaulting on their treatment.

In the North West, in the past seven weeks, people living with tuberculosis (TB) and HIV had no adequate access to treatment and there had been a shortage of contraceptives and HIV testing kits, Yawa said.

Another contributor to HIV patients defaulting on their treatment was that some woke up in the early hours of the morning, between 4am and 5am, to wait for hours in unattended queues at clinics, Yawa said.

ALSO READ: Zweli Mkhize slams ‘nurses becoming judges’ at World Aids Day event

Yawa said the country could not win the war against the epidemic in “isolation” because there was a need to address TB as well.

About 400,000 South Africans contracted TB last year, between 60,000 to 63,000 died from the disease, with about 40,000 of those dead being HIV patients, Yawa said.

The TAC wants the government, in 2021, to declare TB a public health emergency.

The shortage of human resources also contributed to the challenges within the country’s healthcare system, Yawa said.

The government was called to unfreeze the frozen posts within the healthcare sector.

Many healthcare workers had succumbed to Covid-19 this year, which exacerbated the shortage of human resources and the government should fill those vacancies as a matter of urgency, Yawa said.

The TAC general secretary also demanded that the government fix the country’s clinics, many of which were built during apartheid and so were old and now small in the face of a growing population and were mostly overcrowded.

The government should build new clinics in line with the standards of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Yawa said, with the new clinics servicing a catchment area of between 10,000 to 15,000 people, he added.

Currently, in some communities, clinics service about six wards, which is a catchment area of people numbering between 30,000 to 40,000, Yawa said.

The government was also urged to prioritise fixing and procuring more ambulances.

Yawa, as an example, said Eastern Cape health MEC Sindiswa Gomba could have prioritised fixing the province’s broken ambulances rather than spending millions on a R10 million scooter project.

ALSO READ: Phaahla: Covid-19 has not had a severe impact on people living with HIV/Aids

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.