A report in yesterday's Cape Times says that the Eastern Cape government has dumped Lusikisiki's Medicines Sans Frontiers trained HIV/AIDS counsellors because they didn't fit into the department's organogram. As a result, hundreds of HIV patients, in one of the worst affected areas in the country, now do not receive the care and treatment they require. Lusikisiki is the site of the MSF model of care because of its high prevalence of HIV. The programme, run and developed by Dr Hermann Reuter, provided everyone who was eligible for antiretroviral treatment with treatment and no waiting list. Adherence counsellors are the backbone of the programme - and now find themselves without a job, thanks to what can only be described as government incompetence. The situation is totally unacceptable, particularly as this programme was set up with the express purpose of providing sustainable HIV treatment in a very poor area - treatment that is now likely to stop. Peter Dirk Uys famously said, "In the old South Africa we killed people. Now we're just letting them die." How much longer can this carry on?
Bridget Farham, https://www.bizcommunity.com