Patients Turned Away From Treatment Sites to Die
Article from the Treatment Now Web Site
South Africans in the final stages of Aids are being
sent away from treatment clinics, with instructions to return a year later to
get their first anti-retroviral drugs, according to activist groups.
The HIV/Aids activists said yesterday that
waiting lists for treatment, at some sites in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng,
ran to between May and August next year, by which time many of the
people who needed the drugs were likely to have deteriorated
considerably, or died.
People with HIV/Aids became eligible for
anti-retrovirals only when their CD4 count (which measures the body's
ability to fight the virus) fell below 200, so indications were that
those on the waiting list should be starting treatment immediately. The
activist said that only 8 000 people in South Africa are getting
treatment for HIV/Aids at public health facilities.
The government had promised that 53, 000
people would be on treatment by March this year, and then amended that
date to March next year, although hundreds of thousands of people are
estimated to be in need of the life-prolonging drugs now.
In response, organisations including the
Treatment Action Campaign, the Aids Law Project, Medecins Sans
Frontieres, the Institute for Democracy in South Africa and the Southern
African HIV Clinicians Society, have joined forces to form the Joint
Civil Society Monitoring and Evaluation Forum, to report back to the
government and the public on successes and failures of the public sector
anti-retroviral roll-out.
The forum says long waiting lists for
treatment in at least two provinces scotches claims by Health Minister
Manto Tshabalala-Msimang that drugs are available but that take-up is
slow.
This article is available
on the Treatment Now website at:
http://www.childrenfirst.org.za/treatment_now_display?mode=content&id=22703&refto=4529
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