ARV recipient says government is failing them

Eastern Cape rural residents seem to have begun feeling the impact of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw funding of HIV/Aids and TB programmes across the globe.

The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) project funded at 17% of Pretoria’s programmes aimed at reducing HIV transmission and ensuring that people living with the virus enjoy long and healthy lives. USAID funded 44 health projects in South Africa.

Some communities in Matatiele, a poor community with a significant number of residents earning less than R800 per month, say the withdrawal of the Pepfar funding has put their lives at risk.

With some spending at least R110 in a single trip to nearby clinic, they say after spending the little they have, they are now being sent home with just a handful of pills – making it even harder to stay on treatment.

Siyabonga Ndabane is one of the affected patients. He uses the Matatiele Clinic in the northern part of the province. Even though it’s the clinic closest to his home, it’s still over an hour’s taxi ride away.

Ndabane was a recipient of one of the USAID-funded programmes that worked with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in the poverty-stricken province.

According to the 56-year-old, during his last visit to the clinic last month – he was only given 14 tablets instead of his full month dosage.

He says nurses told them that they would have to share their medication following the Donald Trump’s decision to cut the HIV/Aids funding.

This could have dire consequences for those living with the virus as they could land up skipping medication, which would cause drug resistance that weakens one’s immune system – sparking the risk of full blow Aids.

Ndabane was diagnosed in 2016 and says he’s done his best to ensure that he abides by his doctor’s orders.

“My viral load was so low that even before COVID-19 the clinic was giving me pills sometimes for three months. It was good because it meant that I didn’t have to travel all the time, and I didn’t have to find R110 each and every time,” he told TAC researchers who are collecting information from areas that benefitted from the US funding.

The exercise is part of the TAC’s effort to lay bare the realities that those living with HIV are experiencing after Trump’s controversial decision, which many fear could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths on the continent.

While Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, has assured South Africans that the procurement of ARVs won’t be affected by the withdrawal as South Africa buys them with the assistance of funding from the Global Fund, Ndabane is unhappy about how government has been handling the situation. He also believes that it doesn’t fully understand the issues on the ground.

According to a 2022 Human Sciences Research Council study, 83.5% of people living with HIV in the Eastern Cape are on ARVs.

“The government must wake up and see that this is a very bad situation. We can’t just go to the clinic like they think, there are many reasons people can’t go to clinics. The government needs to have better ways to make sure medicines come to the people, especially those of us living in rural areas who don’t have jobs or transport money,” he adds.

The Treatment Action Campaign, which works closely with HIV/AIDs and TB patients, has reiterated its call that ARV recipients get a six-month treatment supply to make it easier for them to stay on medication by reducing the amount of times they need to go to the clinic amid the high unemployment rate the country is grappling with.

A division of the Wits Health Consortium, the Rural Health Advocacy Project, is meanwhile hopeful that the Treasury’s R28 billion health bailout, announced by Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana, yesterday will be used to cover the funding gap created by the withdrawal of US funding, among others.