Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Business Day (Johannesburg) (12.13.07) - Monday, December 17, 2007
Tamar Kahn
The country has seen massive increases in funding for the disease over the past decade, according to report author Collette Schulz-Herzenberg. HIV/AIDS money through the fiscal year ending in March totals 5 billion rand (US $720 million) - 3.5 billion rand (US $504 million) in government funding and another 1.5 billion rand (US $216 million) from donors. "Yet we don't have a good picture of how much is being spent on what and by whom," she said Wednesday at a seminar hosted by ISS.
While the treasury has made "significant progress" in improving provinces' reporting of their HIV/AIDS spending, these reports do not include a detailed breakdown of expenditures. "The devil is in the detail," said Schulz- Herzenberg. In addition, a lack of disaggregated expenditure in relation to donor funding and the dearth of publicly available data on funding offer opportunities for corruption, Schulz-Herzenberg said.
Evidence of corruption in the distribution of food aid for HIV/AIDS patients exists, particularly in Mpumalanga and Eastern Cape, said the report. Some provinces had incomplete records for the food program, and it was difficult to assess whether the funds had been appropriately spent since the authorities did not provide a detailed breakdown of how they spent their HIV/AIDS budgets.
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, South Africa's former deputy health minister, welcomed the report, noting the importance of making government aware of aspects of its HIV/AIDS programs that are vulnerable to corruption. "It is critical that we understand how funding is being used and what impact it is [having]," she said.
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