Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - September 25, 2005
Prega Govender

MORE than 200 private doctors will provide antiretroviral treatment to 1650 HIV-positive teachers and their spouses from November.

The two-year pilot project aimed at teachers in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga follows a study by the Human Sciences Research Council which found high HIV-prevalence rates among educators in these provinces.

According to the study, which was published about six months ago, at least 21.8% of teachers in KwaZulu-Natal are HIV-positive followed by 19.1% in Mpumalanga and 13.8% in the Eastern Cape.

The US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) donated about R19-million to the initiative, which involves seven partners, including four of the country's teacher unions.

The Tshepang Trust - a South African Medical Association initiative tasked with delivering a comprehensive Aids intervention strategy - has identified doctors with the necessary skills to provide antiretroviral treatment to HIV-infected teachers.

The South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) will receive almost R2.6-million over two years. This represents the lion's share of the funding set aside for the four teacher unions.

The unions will use the funding to train at least 58 teachers in the three provinces to provide guidance on issues such as the stigma of living with HIV/Aids, treatment for patients and workplace policies. These teachers will encourage their colleagues to undergo voluntary testing and counselling.

The teachers, who will qualify as "master trainers" after a 14-day training session, will leave their schools for five months to train a representative in each of the 14000 schools in the three provinces. School representatives will engage in peer group education on prevention as well as access to treatment for teachers living with HIV/Aids.

This week 22 teachers in KwaZulu-Natal - some of whom had openly disclosed their HIV status during training sessions - became the first batch to qualify as "master trainers".

Training of teachers in the Eastern Cape starts tomorrow. No date has yet been set for the training of teachers in Mpumalanga.

Director of the project, Khanyisile Mdziniso-Zwane, said: "The teacher representatives' job will be to hold meetings with colleagues regularly and to refer those who need services."

She said they would follow the national Department of Health's protocol of giving antiretroviral treatment to only those HIV-positive teachers whose CD4 cell count was below 200.

She confirmed that 1650 HIV-infected teachers and their spouses would receive antiretrovirals during the pilot phase of the project.

David Mbetse, head of Sadtu's HIV/Aids unit, said the union planned to provide antiretrovirals to about 3000 teachers living with HIV over the next three years.

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