Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - September 9, 2007
Brendan Boyle
Dr Nomonde Xundu, head of the Health Department's HIV/Aids unit, told the Sunday Times they had since submitted a request for another "significant" boost to the ring-fenced allocation for antiretroviral (ARV) therapy in the October mini-budget.
Lesetja Kganyago, the director- general of the Treasury, told the Sunday Times the ARV allocation was increased because it was clear by September last year that the programme was well planned and meeting its targets.
"We picked up towards the end of the last calendar year that this programme was beginning to gather pace. By the end of the fiscal year it had spent 97% of its budget and that said to us, here is a programme that is working, and we gave it more money," he said.
Kganyago said, without giving further details, that the Treasury also gave more than the Department of Safety and Security had asked for to a handful of small anti-crime programmes.
The Treasury reported this week that state clinics had doubled the number of people on life-prolonging ARV treatment to 264423 by March this year and expected the number to reach at least 600000 by the end of the budget planning cycle in March 2010.
Expansion of the ARV programme accounts for most of the 10% annual increase planned in the Health Department's budget over the next three years.
Funding for all dedicated HIV- related programmes will rise by an average 30% a year to the end of the decade. If the department's latest request is approved, that ratio would rocket.
Xundu said the current growth would bring about 60% of the roughly one million people with full- blown Aids on state programmes by the end of the decade. With the additional funds requested that proportion could be enhanced, although it would not meet the target of 100% treatment by 2010.
She said non-government programmes were believed to reach a further four people for every 10 on state programmes.
Gauteng has the highest number of people on state-funded ARV treatment, at 75000. KwaZulu- Natal, which has the heaviest infection load, was second at 73641. Limpopo reported only 2818 people on the programme.
Xundu said about a fifth of the additional funds requested would go to other Aids-related issues, such as more efficient testing to improve the mother-to-child programme and an allocation for more expensive ARVs for a minority of people with Aids who can't tolerate the existing therapy.
Kganyago said that of the services offered by provinces, the Health Department reports had been the most unexpected.
"We're not about to allocate more money to a programme that is not successful," he said.
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