Which way South Africa's HIV/AIDS campaign?

Dr David Kalombo, national project manager, Directorate: Management for Comprehensive HIV & AIDS Plan: Department of Health – Pretoria.

According to Dr David Kalombo, national project manager, Directorate: Management for Comprehensive HIV & AIDS Plan: Department of Health – Pretoria, in 2006 there were 39.5 million HIV-positive people worldwide, of which 63% (29.9 million) are in sub-Saharan Africa, and of them, 5.54 million are in South Africa. Out of a population 47 million, that means some 12% of South Africans are HIV-positive.

To combat the pandemic, the SA government has a strategic plan that essentially stands on three legs:
* Providing comprehensive care and treatment for HIV/AIDS sufferers
* Strengthening the health-care system
* Making sure those who are HIV-negative, remain so.

“To support these initiatives, we are distributing 455 million condoms, we have trained 2000 new health-care workers and trained more than 20000 existing health-care workers in the treatment of HIV/AIDS sufferers,' said Dr Kalombo.

He added that a program to procure and distribute drugs has been allocated over R3 billion over the next three years.

To complement this program, the Pharmovigilance Centre at Medunsa deals with focusing on the adverse effects of the drugs in specific cases; about 700 cases of adverse reactions to the drugs have been recorded.

“We have also certified 250 laboratories country-wide,' he added.

Currently – by early June this year – 320447 HIV/AIDS patients were on ARTs, of which 32312 are children.

“Some 96 percent of these are on regimen 1 and 3 percent are on regimen 2,” said Dr Kalombo, adding that an AIDS helpline has been established in every province.

He went on to say that all districts have at least one service point and 76% of sub-districts have one service point.

“Delays in further roll-out are due to a lack of human resources and infrastructure issues, particularly in rural areas,” he said.

“Our target for 2007-2011 is 120000 new adult patients on ARVs, with 90000 by the end of March 2008.

“To this end, we will have allocated R1.9 billion in 2007/8 for ART and enhanced programs,” he said.

An area that remains a challenge is that of data collection; it is still paper based and needs to be electronic for greater efficiency and ease of use.