HEALTH-SOUTH AFRICA: A Qualified Welcome for AIDS Budget

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 22 2004 (IPS) - South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has received mixed reviews from AIDS activists for the annual budget he announced last week.

Manuel allocated 2.1 billion rand (about 314 million dollars) for the fight against AIDS, including the provision of anti-retroviral drugs (ARV’s). (Over the next three years, government plans to spend 1.9 billion dollars to bring the pandemic under control.)

More than five million people, or over 10 percent of South Africa’s population, are said to be infected with the HI-virus that causes AIDS. About 600 of these die from AIDS-related illnesses everyday, according to lobby groups.

“Manuel is making a very big effort. The money will help a lot of people. But it won’t help as many people as we would have wanted,” Karen Stillwell, Coordinator of AIDSLINK, a Johannesburg-based non- governmental organisation (NGO), told IPS.

Her colleague Michael Drysdale agreed, saying “The 2.1 billion rand is not enough. It could have been enough a year ago. But the problem has been left for so long. Now we need six times that amount.”

ARV drugs cost up to 135 dollars per month, Drysdale noted. “But there is a generic drug that comes over the border from Swaziland and it costs 600 rand (about 90 dollars) per month.”

“The problem is most people are poor and can’t afford the drugs,” Drysdale said. “Besides, we have to look at the issue of nutrition which is crucial in managing the conditions of people with HIV/AIDS.”

“It really breaks my heart when we could do more to save lives,” observed Stillwell. “But the problem is always money, money.”

When it announced an ARV treatment programme last November, government spoke of treating around 50,000 people by March this year.

But the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), South Africa’s leading AIDS pressure group, says “less than 1,500 people have been placed on treatment programmes, nearly all of them in the Western Cape province”.

Government estimates that half-a-million South Africans need ARV’s at present. According to the TAC, fewer than one percent of these people have access to these medicines and they are mostly in the private sector.

Manuel said part of the 314 million dollar AIDS allocation would be spent on implementing the new rural and scarce skills allowances, which are aimed at improving health services in remote areas and retaining highly-skilled professionals in the health service. “Twenty-seven hospitals will also be completely upgraded or replaced as part of the Hospital Revitalisation Programme,” he added.

As debate continues over the rollout of ARV’s, certain businesses are doing their bit to fight AIDS. GlaxoSmithKline, an international pharmaceutical company, has urged South African companies and NGO’s to take up “preferential” pricing offers for employee treatment programmes.

In an advertisement issued last week, GlaxoSmithKline said this offer was being made to employers in sub-Saharan Africa who were able to institute AIDS treatment programmes in the workplace or elsewhere.

Large German car makers DaimlerChrysler, BMW and Volkswagen are already making ARV’s available to their workforces. HIV prevalence in these companies is put at between six and nine percent.

In addition, diamond giant De Beers announced recently that it would pay 90 percent of treatment costs for employees who were at risk of contracting AIDS-related diseases.