Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - February 5, 2006
Bongani Mthethwa

The university has failed to persuade a large number of students to enrol in its anti-retroviral programme.

This could be a major setback to a recent call by the South African Students' Congress (Sasco) for universities to provide HIV-positive students with Aids drugs.

Last month, Sasco said it believed tertiary institutions were best placed to provide ARV treatment, as most students made use of campus health services rather than the government's programme.

UKZN is the only tertiary institution in the country that supplies antiretrovirals to HIV-positive students. The programme is funded through the university's Aids Treatment Fund.

The scheme - the brainchild of internationally renowned epidemiologist Prof Salim Abdool Karim, who is the pro vice-chancellor of research at the university - was launched two years ago.

It enables students to access Aids care, including triple ARVs, counselling, blood tests and doctor's consultations.

But since its inception the programme has attracted only about20 patients.

Last year the programme provided voluntary counselling and testing for HIV for 2257 students out of a student population of more than 40000.

According to a 1999 study, the university had a 16% HIV/Aids prevalence among its 40617 staff and students.

This week Karim said while the university did not have new data on the prevalence of HIV on campus, it had no reason to expect it to be different from South Africa's prevalence rate.

Based on those estimates, the university had expected a large number of students to enrol in the antiretroviral therapy programme.

"The main reason, in my opinion, for these numbers on treatment being low is our lack of capacity to scale up voluntary counselling and testing and to encourage even larger numbers of students to come forward for testing," said Karim.

He added that the university needed to reach more than the 2257 students it had provided with testing and counselling last year.

"This is the challenge I see facing us at UKZN in providing ART, and it reflects the broader problem facing roll-out of ART in South Africa."

Chris Mokolatsie, the director of the university's Aids programme, blamed the failure to attract students on a lack of capacity.

He said the programme was at present operating with only four counsellors, who were expected to serve all five campuses.

"I think that if there was enough capacity, there would be room for us to market counselling and testing aggressively among students," he said.

The university was considering partnerships with NGOs and the public sector to provide it with more counsellors.

"Beyond that, it's really a challenge. I don't see how we're going to deal with it."

Mokolatsie said there was no evidence that the HIV/Aids stigma was the main contributing factor to low student numbers on the programme.

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