INLSA

STRUGGLE CONTINUES: A child is tested for HIV at a Cape Town clinic. The government spends over R30 billion a year on HIV/Aids programmes. Picture: Matthew Jordaan

Kerry Cullinan

Last year alone, 376 000 people with HIV started antiretroviral (ARV) medication – over 100 000 more than the previous year.

Sadly, during that same year up to 450 000 people were infected with HIV, mostly due to “the lack of a co-ordinated and effective prevention response”.

These are some of the issues raised by the Health Systems Trust’s SA Health Review 2011 which was launched yesterday in Pretoria.

The government’s bill for HIV/Aids is over R30 billion a year, according to Treasury officials Mark Blecher, Aparna Kollipara, Nomkhosi Zulu and academic Pieter de Jager.

The conditional grant for HIV/Aids has increased by 44 percent a year, or R1.3bn over the past three years.

But while the cost is high, the results have been significant.

Seven years ago, only 7 percent of South Africans in need were on antiretroviral treatment but by the end of 2010, this figure had jumped to 84 percent.

By the end of March last year, 1.46 million people were on ARVs.

The country’s greatest success is the reduction of HIV-positive pregnant mothers passing the virus to their babies, from a 10 percent transmission rate to 3.5 percent.

Tuberculosis, the biggest opportunistic infection to affect people with HIV, is also taking a chunk out of health-care funding.

KwaZulu-Natal is particularly hard hit and will spend almost R900m on TB hospitals this year, almost triple the next biggest spender, the Eastern Cape.

KZN had almost double the hospitalised patients of the Eastern Cape, with 124 626.

By 2010, one in 10 TB patients were dying – an increase of almost 2 percent in five years but one that health experts blame on the rise of drug-resistant TB. – Health-e News Service