Poor to get Aids drugs first

MAWANDE JUBASI

The impoverished community of KwaDabeka in Durban will be one of the first pilot sites to receive antiretroviral drugs at its clinic for HIV-infected patients when KwaZulu- Natal receives its R720-million grant from the UN Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria.

Dr Robert Pawinski, a co-leader of the KwaZulu-Natal Enhancing Care Initiative, announced this during a meeting of health workers and Aids activists at the clinic on Friday.

Pawinski said that they expected the money to be released by the end of December, adding that they would be ready to roll out antiretrovirals by early next year.

Pawinski scoffed at recent claims by Health Minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang that a big chunk of the R720-million allocated to the initiative would be used to purchase vehicles.

"It is not true that we will be utilising R43-million for vehicles. We will be utilising only a fraction, which is 0.4% of the allocation, for vehicles which we need for our home-based care system for Aids patients based in inaccessible rural areas," he said.

"It is the expansion of the prevention of mother-to-child transmission programme, the home-based care and the voluntary counselling and testing that will take up more than 60% of the money."

Pawinski said the Global Fund had rejected the health minister's call to distribute the R720-million allocation equitably across the provinces and insisted that the money be used only in KwaZulu-Natal.

The rollout of antiretrovirals will begin with infected health workers in the province, he said.

"We will then extend it to their families and then to patients suffering from tuberculosis and other opportunistic diseases."

Pawinski said the rollout would start with six sites in the province, including the KwaDabeka Clinic and King Edward Hospital.

"With enough resources, we should be able to treat all health workers throughout the province as a start. Doing this should . . . create capacity to roll out antiretrovirals throughout the province," said Pawinski.

He presented a summary of two years of research findings to the community and healthcare workers involved in the research.

Their understanding of the problems with HIV/Aids prevention, support and care services were instrumental in writing the Global Fund proposal, which included all aspects of the fight against HIV/Aids, he said.

The initiative appreciated the role played by the provincial Health MEC, Zweli Mkhize, in developing its proposal, said Pawinski.