SA healthcare receives a huge cash injection

Tamar Kahn

Science and Health Editor

CAPE TOWN — Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has allocated extra money for the immediate crisis posed by SA’s HIV/AIDS epidemic while not forgetting the long-term challenge of improving health infrastructure and retaining skilled staff in the public sector, the medium-term budget policy statement shows.

An extra R300m is allocated to the HIV/AIDS conditional grants this year. The money provides for the increased cost of the new AZT-nevirapine regimen for preventing mother to child transmission of HIV, which replaces a regimen based solely on nevirapine.

Extra funds were also needed to accommodate more patients than had been anticipated on the government’s free treatment programme, said the treasury’s director for health policy Mark Bletcher.

More than 500000 HIV patients had started treatment since the programme’s inception in 2004, 200000 of them in the past year, he said. The budget for HIV/AIDS conditional grants has been revised up R932m over the medium term, taking the total to R12,4bn.

The budget increases the provincial equitable share by R1bn in 2008-09 to pay for higher than anticipated implementation of new occupation-specific wage dispensation for nurses. The 10,5% increase in salaries negotiated in the bargaining chamber was significantly higher than the 7,5% increase provinces had budgeted for this year, said Bletcher.