Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Associated Press - November 19, 2003
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said the government still needed to put out a tender for the drugs, train healthcare workers, and identify and upgrade distribution centers, particularly in rural areas.
"There is still a long way to go," she said at a news briefing after the weekly Cabinet meeting. "I don't want to raise false hopes, but a decision has been made. There is hope."
Under pressure to tackle the AIDS pandemic ravaging the country, the government had ordered the health ministry to draft a national plan for the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs by the end of September. The plan was only submitted to Cabinet last week.
The government had previously refused to provide AIDS medicine through the health system, saying it would be too expensive and it questioned the drugs' effectiveness.
Its reluctance to do so brought criticism it was failing to aggressively fight AIDS.
Some 4.7 million South Africans, roughly 11% of the population, are infected with HIV. An estimated 600 to 1,000 South Africans die every day from AIDS-related complications.
The plan, drafted with the assistance of the U.S.-based William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, was only submitted to Cabinet last week.
The government aims to treat 50,000 patients within the first year of the program.
Provincial governments will be charged with rolling out the plan, including ensuring at least one treatment center is in operation in every local health district within a year, extending to one in every municipality in the next five.
The plan is expected to cost 296 million rand ($1=ZAR6.576) in the current fiscal year ending in March 2004, growing to nearly ZAR4.5 billion in 2007-08, Tshabalala-Msimang said.
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