How The Health Department Will Deal With Pepfars Near Collapse

Offering state HIV patients who qualify a six-month supply of antiretroviral ARVs pills at a time, so that they only have to return to clinics or community pick-up points twice a year to collect their medication, is one of the goals in the health departments contingency plan to cope with the near collapse of US-funded HIV projects.

This will lower the work load of health workers, the strategy that was sent to provincial health departments and public health facilities on 11 February , says.

Until recently, the US governments Aids fund, the Presidents Emergency Plan for Aids Relief Pepfar, funded many nonprofits in South Africa to help provincial health departments with getting people tested for HIV and putting them onto treatment. Although the government paid for the medication, Pepfar funded the salaries of the health workers such as nurses, pharmacists, data capturers and community health workers, who worked for the organisations and dispensed the drugs.

But in late January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that froze all foreign aid, which led to many of the clinics that were run by the health workers, closing down , because their employers had no money to pay their salaries. Some of the workers operated from government clinics, which now have to do without them, until court proceedings, which order the Trump administration to temporarily unfreeze the funds, are finalised.