Johannesburg - Patients and nurses in the Eastern Cape, Gauteng and Mpumalanga continue to report medicine stock-outs at local clinics, including shortages of antiretroviral drugs. This is despite repeated assurances by some provincial health officials that this is not the case.
Last Friday, more than 50 patients held a sit-in protest at the village clinic in Lusikisiki, Eastern Cape, after being told that the ARV efavirenz was out of stock. The clinic also did not have the new three-in-one ARV tenofovir/emtricitabine/efavirenz.
Meanwhile, patients across Gauteng have reported a shortage of the drug lamivudine (also known as 3TC) and, to a lesser extent, tenofovir.
In Ekurhuleni, clinics affected by the lamivudine and tenofovir stock-outs include Phenduka, Dresser, Sonto Thobela, Tsakane Main, Andries Raditsela and Chris Hani clinics, and the Phillip Moyo and Tembisa health-care centres.
Peggy Dlamini, a patient at Phillip Moyo, said she had been dismissed from work for being absent every Thursday, trying to get her treatment.
“I spent almost three weeks missing a day of work to come and get my treatment, but I was always going home empty-handed and now I have been laid off at work,” said Dlamini.
Portia Serote, who works for the Treatment Action Campaign, said depot authorities had told them they lacked space to store drugs.
Provincial spokesman Chris Maxon blamed the shortage on “supplier capacity challenges”.
HIV doctors are concerned that disruptions to their patients’ ARV treatment could increase cases of drug-resistant HIV, as is the case with tuberculosis.
TB medication is also running short in some Tshwane and Eastern Cape clinics, while some clinics don’t have insulin for diabetics, or medicine to treat epilepsy or asthma, according to reports from OurHealth monitors visiting local clinics.
Stocks of the tetanus vaccine are also reportedly low countrywide.
“We are concerned about reports of the stock-outs, particularly of ARVs, and an instruction has been issued that buffer stock be sent to facilities reporting shortages,” said Department of Health spokesman Joe Maila.
He added that the national department was trying to ascertain “who has what, where and why”.
A health worker at St Elizabeth Gateway Clinic in the Eastern Cape told patients she had been told that the district’s stock of efavirenz was at the Mthatha depot “because there was no space in the delivery truck”.
The shortage of lamivudine in Mabopane and Winterveld has been blamed on an influx of patients to these clinics after the closure of the Hope for Life Clinic, which was previously supported by the US President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief.
However, lamuvidine shortages were also experienced in Daveyton, Etwatwa and Soweto, and in Mpumalanga at Secunda and Barberton. Some clinics there also reported shortages of tenofovir.
Olga Monyane, a patient at Dube clinic in Winterveld, said she was worried she might die.
The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa expressed concern at the ARV shortage in Gauteng, saying nurses were being labelled as “uncaring professionals who deprive patients of medication”, when the problem lay with suppliers.
Meanwhile, Gauteng Health MEC Hope Papo said ARV medication was distributed yesterday to clinics in the province experiencing a shortage of supplies, adding: “We are taking every possible step to stabilise drug supply in the province.”
Papo said 50 000 units of lamivudine were delivered to Helen Joseph Hospital yesterday morning, and it would be delivered to clinics in Ekurhuleni.
More stock was expected to be distributed today, the MEC said.
In a statement, the department said the Daveyton East Clinic, which had inadequate ARV supplies, was among the first to receive stock.
The SA National Aids Council
said: “We wish to urge the Gauteng Department of Health to strengthen its procurement and distribution systems so that such an occurrence does not happen in future.”
Department spokesman Simon Zwane said the shortage was caused because of capacity at the suppliers, and that the department was looking at ways of improving capacity at the depots. – Health E-News, sdditional reporting by Sapa